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9:07:00 AM EDT
Hearing Luka Bloom -- Delirious
Low Rider
I quite agree with this article in Slate, which takes a whack at the craze for low-riding women's pants, the most recent generation of which makes the hip-huggers that were popular 30 years ago look like overalls. At this rate of decline, the next generation of women's pants will be a pair of denim leggings attached to the upper thigh with a string, and while in a theoretical sense this could be a compelling look for us spectators, the practical application in our real world of increasingly larger people would be fairly grim.
One thing the article points out is that the hig-hugging style is being worn by older women -- late 20s and above -- and I have to agree this is a real problem. Not because women of this age can't fit into hip-huggers, since I imagine some do, although the amount of time you have to dedicated to making one's self structurally correct for such pants increases exponentially with each year past 23. The real problem is that the older you get, the more aware you should be of the fact that certain clothes are designed to make you look ridiculous, and you should refuse to wear them just out of principle. Low-riders are definitely that sort of clothing.
Teenagers get a pass for wearing them because it's understood the teenager must always wear clothes that look silly (think on your own teenage attire), but older people know better. So the fact they persist after college graduation is troubling. It's also one of the few times that men have women at a sartorial disadvantage; you rarely see a man over the age of 23 wearing those damn fool baggy pants that make teenage and college boys look like they've been flattened by a cartoon steamroller. If we could just get them to ditch those dopey caps, we'd be all set.
As for the low riders, I won't be too distraught when this particular fashion statement to goes back into the closet. And to be entirely honest, I don't expect most of the women wearing these things will be all torn up about it, either.
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Ah, but the flaw in your thinking is that we've reach the point where clothes are as ridiculous as they can go. I submit that teenagers might instead wear even more silly clothing, and we'd end up with the new "normal" for adults being hip huggers and baggy pants. I don't want to live in that world, thank you all the same.
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You're missing the point. It's all a finely and elaborately crafted guise by the fashion industry to force teens back into wearing slacks with dress shirts and dresses.
It's a well known fact that kids will do whatever it takes to be the polar opposite of their parents as far as fashion styles go, so if we adults dress as rediculous as possible, the kids will have no choice but to dress up!
10/13/03 12:47 PM
'Course, that's the whole point, innit? (Sex. For. Sale. Even if you're only 12. Even if you're over 40.)
:Snerk: