No More Butt Cleavage

Although it was first written way back in 2003, this article was republished, I believe, because it is still oh-so-relevant! I have very little in common with this writer, however I feel her pain as I have felt too many times in recent years!!

In Hello, Moon, Amanda Fortini describes the 'crack epidemic' that has swept our country in recent years:

"Sitting in a booth with a friend at an excruciatingly hip restaurant in downtown Manhattan a few weeks ago, I glanced up to see a fleshy forest of crevices and multiple folds of skin and G-strings that three women in their late 20s were displaying for the world. It was then that I knew: This low-rider style has gone too far."

Amen and Hallauha!! The author goes on to describe the issue,

"On the street, on television, even in the office, women of all ages and sizes are wearing tight, low-slung, butt-hugging jeans and pants that hit at, or often far below, the hip. The trend isn't new—it began around '95 or so—but what is new are the unlovely depths to which the pants have now, as it were, sunk. The crotch-to-waist measurement, or rise, on a standard pair of jeans (the sort we haven't seen much of since the early '90s) is somewhere between 10 and 12 inches. Early low-riders had a rise of about 7 inches. Over the past couple of years, the rise has dipped as low as 3 or 4 inches... Usually paired with midriff-baring shirts—even tops that aren't cropped can't cover the exposed expanse of abdominal flesh—the jeans have redefined our collective understanding of cleavage. Then there's the oft-visible G-string that, like a bra strap, creates strange fleshy bulges as it strains against the body. But there are worse bulges yet. These are the love handles that materialize on even the thinnest women—models and anorexics excepted—because the jeans hit a woman's body at its fleshiest point, below the hips, just above the buttocks. Of course, the feminist in me wants to applaud the insouciance with which women of all shapes now flaunt their imperfections, but the aesthete in me objects. This is a style that suits only 12-year-olds and celebrities who have the luxury of devoting entire afternoons to sculpting their obliques. For the rest of us, wearing these jeans is like putting our hips and buttocks in some humiliating reality show."

Now you may be thinking, "Kook, you own many pairs of those low-rise pants. You wear them despite their 'downfalls.' What do you have to be outraged about?" You see, it's because of these low-rise pants that I've been in the same situation as the author describes... unfortunately, both as the unaware-flasher-in-pants (Sorry, Mom) and the awe-stricken-observer! The author goes on to describe everything I've dealt with during recent years...

"Yet the real problem with extremely low-riding pants is that they're impractical. Sitting is difficult: If you can't find a chair with a closed back, you have to tie a shirt around your waist—always highly attractive—or risk scandalizing the room. If you drop something, or need to tie your shoe, abandon all hope; bending over with dignity is next to impossible. You must perfect the art of squatting, back straight, head up, as though preparing to curtsy. Low-riders also tend to slide down, requiring the wearer to hitch them up repeatedly. In their way, low-rider jeans bear a creepy similarity to Chinese foot-binding—they constrict a woman's action, rendering her ornamental..."

Although I perfected the 'curtsy' lean; there's little to no way to get around the 'backside draft' 100% of the time. And I'm NOT going to be the cause of a FL retiree having a heart attack over their meal. By now most of my low-rise jeans have become 'house wear,' leaving me with exactly 1 pair of jeans. Sad, isn't it?

"It usually takes only a couple of months for a trend to go from the fashion magazines to the streets, and yet somehow, like the G-strings it popularized, this trend clings tenaciously on. It could be that the pants are a feminist statement, demanding as they do an ecumenical embrace of body type by wearer and viewer alike, and as such, women are loath to abandon them. It could be that the dark fissures and peek-a-boo undies they reveal are physical emblems of our confessional culture, the sartorial equivalent of the tell-all memoir. It could simply be that letting your belly hang free is comfortable. Or that women, buying these pants for lack of choice, have unwittingly created a false sense of demand. But the strongest argument for the persistence of the trend might simply be that we want to dress like the '70s because we feel like we're starring in a reprise of that decade: Our economy is bad; we're entrenched in an occupation abroad; we mistrust our government at home."

Hmm....