Attack of the Butt-Cracks

(Or, how your being a slave to fashion may have people laughing at you behind your back[side].)

I see it nearly every day - otherwise attractive looking young women wearing stuff that is either 1) totally unsuited for their body type, or 2) just plain fall-on-your-ass-laughing silly.

Case in point, "low rise" or "hiphugger" jeans. Girls, let's face it - even though your fashionista idols on TV may wear this type of pants, only maybe one in every hundred women looks decent in them. The rest of us look like we're five months pregnant - or worse. These pants make even normally curvy women look like overweight, hugely love-handled, binge beer-drinking trailer park refugees.

Then there is the butt-crack issue. You simply cannot bend over even the slightest in these pants without your backside hanging out. If you haven't noticed this "feature" you really should. There have been times I've literally felt compelled to cover my eyes out of embarassment for your unwitting humiliation. I'm sure that most of you just don't think about it, but please - the next time you put on your midi tops and your low rise jeans, do all of us a favor and bend over in front of a mirror and have a good look at what you're flashing at the world. And then for goodness sake, if you agree that's not putting your best side forward, go put on a longer top or some jeans that aren't about to fall off! Have some respect for yourself and everyone else. Okay?

Second case in point: wearing really high heeled stiletto pumps. With jeans. At school. In the rain. I call these "silly shoes" and when I see them I always wonder about the mental health of the woman wearing them.

I saw a young woman today that I could tell was wearing these killer shoes before I even could see her feet. She had that choppy, ungainly, clown-on-stilts walk that one can spot a half mile off. She was wearing what had to be 3- inch pencil thin heels to walk around on campus. In the rain. In a place and a season where one can encounter ice on the walkways, not to mention the cracks in the concrete and uneven joins in the pavement. This gal was a broken leg or busted face waiting to happen. So if you can't bring yourself to wear sensible shoes for walking around outside on uneven ground in all weather, you might consider keeping the heels to under 2 inches. Then at least maybe you won't look quite so much like a badly-strung marionette as you mince around campus on your shoe-stilts.

I know silly fads in clothing aren't anything new - I have several books in my personal library on fashions throughout history. I've always considered it amazing what people will wear if someone convinces them that it's "posh" to do so. But I think sometimes that we here in the good old "modern" U.S. are just as silly and superficial as any of these fashionplates from the past. I wouldn't be surprised if in a few hundred years people are writing books about what passes for fashion now, and having a huge belly laugh at our expense.

So, you might want to do what you can now to make sure pictures of your butt-crack don't end up on those yet-to-be-written pages. I'm just sayin'...