Butting in on fashion: Gen-X sinks to new lows

If you thought the belly-baring thing was bad enough, take a good look at the sartorial depths to which fashion has now sunk. The Los Angeles Times last week declared it "the summer of the pelvic bone." Last year's already obscene low-riders have gone the way of high-water polyester pants.

Today's hip-huggers have almost nothing but hope to hang onto anymore. The "normal" inseam-to-waist rise of 8 to 9 inches is shrinking faster than Britney Spears' record sales. To wit, Levi's has introduced a new line of jeans called "Too Superlow" for women. Upping the ante, or should I say lowering it, the teenage-girl brand Gasoline markets "Down2There" -- adjustable low-rise jeans with a built-in bungee cord designed to help the wearer drop her pants to even nastier nadirs.

Canadian teen singer Avril Lavigne's perilously sagging pants are a global youth phenomenon. "My butt crack showing is like my trademark," she gracefully explained to a music reporter. Salon.com writer Janelle Brown approves: "(T)he butt crack is the new cleavage, reclaimed to peek seductively from the pants of supermodels and commoners alike."

The late Sen. and social critic Daniel Patrick Moynihan's famous phrase "Defining deviancy down" has taken on a whole new meaning.

Grown-ups, be forewarned: Avril's fashion nonsense is seeping into other markets. Levi's recently launched a "Dangerously Low" line for men. Another of its low-rise men's lines is dubbed, appropriately enough, "Offender." Actor Brad Pitt has popularized the Diesel brand low-risers. Toronto-based writer Jim Oldfield says the trend has overwhelmed mainstream men's stores and orders are already piling up for the fall. One Canadian merchant helpfully advised Oldfield that hip men are wearing the jeans commando-style.

Even expectant women can't escape these drooping duds. Popular young actress and mom-to-be Kate Hudson has been photographed parading around in low-rise cargo pants and toddler-sized crop tops to show off her growing belly. At a recent trip to my neighborhood mall's maternity store, the only jeans in my size were ridiculous low-risers with flared bottoms that needed hiking every time I exhaled.

Trust me: This nouveau plumber's crack chic does not look any better on the overweight guy crouching under your kitchen sink than it does on a six-months-pregnant lady trying to bend over to pick up her toddler without mooning the world.

What will it take to convince the current cohort of exhibitionistas that sleaze is not sexy -- that less is not always more, that low is low-class? If Generation X-rated can't be persuaded to cover up out of moral necessity, perhaps they will listen to medical authority. A warning about the health hazards of low-rise pants was published in the Canadian Medical Association six months ago. According to Dr. Malvinder Parmar, a painful condition called "meralgia paresthetica" is causing wearers of hip-huggers to experience "tingling or a burning sensation" in the thighs.

Dr. Parmar's treatment: four to six weeks in -- the horror! -- loose-fitting dresses. Must have been worse than swallowing cod liver oil.

Avril and Britney and Brad need to show their fans that a little extra fabric is not a death sentence. The late Kate Hepburn melted hearts while fully clothed in turtlenecks and roomy, belted trousers. She was a "hottie" who showed us her cheekbones, and left the rest where it should be left: to the imagination.

Alas, modesty has been long out of vogue. But it's a fashion rule of thumb that what's out eventually becomes in. The day when "clothed is the new naked" can't come soon enough.

Malkin is a nationally syndicated columnist based in North Bethesda, Md. malkin@comcast.net

http://www.azcentral.com/style/articles/0612plumberbutt.html

'Plumber's butt' goes coed

alt
AP

Gina Daugherty
The Cincinnati Enquirer

"Plumber's butt." You know, that blindingly pale patch of derriere that peeks out from between a shirt that rides up and pants that slide down. Most commonly seen when a beefy plumber or other worker reaches or squats while on the job. Most common until recently, that is. The effect is no longer just a boy's club, as women are baring their posteriors - sometimes intentionally, sometimes not - in the name of fashion. Low-rise jeans have booty poppin' out all over the place. Everyone is getting cheeky. Call it the new cleavage.

At Bee Clean Car Wash in Mason, Ohio, Annamarie Minturn and Cassie Thierauf, both 19, are baring their butts (albeit unintentionally) every time they lean over a car, bend down to vacuum or wipe down a tire. Thierauf's rhinestone-studded thong is there for all to see. She doesn't mean to, but when your pants hug your hips, it's bound to happen.

Related stories:
• Hip huggers a health threat?

Fashion shockers through the ages:
Fashion always taunted social mores, but the past century has really pushed the limits of taste:

• Early 1920s: Flappers, short haircuts on women; cowl neck and halter top.

• Late 1920s: Knee-length hemline marks new high for women's legs.

• 1950s: Stiletto heels come into fashion.

• 1955: Marilyn Monroe stands over subway grate for movie "Seven Year Itch" and flashes movie-goers with her white panties.

• 1960s: Bell bottoms, hip huggers and go-go boots define "mod" scene.

• 1970s: Hot pants. Enough said.

• 1984: "Anything goes" emerges as fashion credo.

• 1990: Madonna starts wearing lingerie as outerwear, complete with cone-shaped bras.

• 1999: Britney Spears wears midriff-revealing Catholic school-girl outfit in "Baby, One More Time" video.

• 2000: Britney Spears makes news again, this time wearing a nude, two-piece body suit to MTV Video Music Awards.

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"It's not that I have them low so my thong can hang out," explains Thierauf. "It's a product of the pant."

Indeed. The space between Thierauf's belly button ring and the top of her jeans is at least three inches. She says the distance is greater on some of her other pants.

It's virtually impossible to find jeans to cover your hipbones these days, and finding them to cover your cheeks continues to get harder. When Sisqo rapped, "Let me see that thooooong," he probably didn't have to look very hard.

The thong is an absolute must for Latresha Lane. She runs a modeling company and without the thong, she and her models would be out of business. Visible panty lines (or VPL) are not an option.

For many women, low-rise, hip baring jeans are causing all kinds of VPL. Some jeans are so low there isn't enough room for a zipper, as is the case with Levi's Too Superlows, which feature two snap buttons instead.

Technically speaking, the "rise" of jeans is the distance between the crotch and waist. The average rise is about 10 inches. But on low-rise pants, it can be as little as six inches, depending on the brand.

Recent college graduate Marianne Pusz, 23, loves low-rise jeans. She won't wear anything else and says they are a "godsend to women with big butts."

"They show off your waist," Pusz says. "But if you don't have a butt, it's not going to make you look better by having your butt hang out. Older women wear the waist-high jeans, and it doesn't matter if you're the skinniest woman on the planet, they are going to make it look like you have a butt the size of Texas."

A dogged advocate of keeping cracks and thongs out of public view, Pusz buys Victoria's Secret low-cut bikini briefs (LINK). She tried going "commando" (sans underwear), but says it was "excruciating." The low-rise jeans phenomenon has led to a low-rise panty phenomenon.

Pusz is unbreakable in her resolve against panty showing, and she quickly decides only Britney Spears and Gwen Stefani can get away with it.

"Don't give me that, 'Oops I did it again, my thong is hanging out,' " says Pusz. "Unless you are Britney Spears, forget about it. If you are wearing low-rise jeans and regular underwear, you should be carted away. Panty lines plus showing your underwear is the cardinal sin of low-rise jeans."

Big shocker that Ryan Nesbitt doesn't mind, though. An 18-year-old, he has nothing against a half-inch to an inch of butt cleavage on a "Tara Reid-type" woman. "Bootylicious," he says.

All this butt cleavage has school administrators and some parents reeling. Not everyone wants to see the gluteus maximus in school, not even in anatomy class.

For schools, the styles pose the expected dress code issues.

Still, fashion comes and goes, so enjoy it now, as this butt-baring might be outdated by fall. Don't fret, though. There's still plumber's butt, unless Joe Schlueter has anything to do with it.

The owner of Schlueter Plumbing Inc. in Cincinnati has been in the business for over 35 years. He has worked hard to shed the plumber's "showy" stigma. His plumbers wear uniforms.

"I can't guarantee you won't see a little butt crack," Schlueter says. "Plumbing does involve bending over a lot ... But we are conscious of it and we want to put someone in your home that you feel comfortable with."

And that's just better for everyone.

What's the latest thinking on the birthday boundaries between boomer, Xer, and Y?

Boomer/X cutoff, sometime in the early 60s, though personally I'd make it more of the mid-60s. X/Y cutoffs, mid- to late-70s. And I've seen some people argue that someone who is 15 years old today is actually in "Generation Z" (or whatever other new name they wish to apply to the kid).

Which just goes to show that all the terms are pretty much made up out of whole cloth. Notice how comparatively gigantic the "Baby Boomer" generation supposedly is; the "oldest" of them are only a few years away from retirement age, which means Boomerdom seems to apply to anyone born from around 1945 to 1965, while the X-Y-Z zones only appear to encompass a 10-15 year period each. It's all BS in the end really, in terms of dates; the terms only have relevance in terms of how the members of each group think and act, the overall Zeitgeist of the given group. And IMHO, the only real differences between Gen-X and Gen-Y are that Gen-Y is growing up to be far more conservative and less whiny than Gen-Xers, who all thought they were going to change the world (gee, wonder where they got that idea from) through their big dotcom fraud, and are all pissed off that they didn't get to retire at 30 after all. Gen-Y, by comparison, have far more level heads.

And it's way too early to say anything about the Gen-Z zeitgeist, or even to declare Gen-Z to legitimately exist, if you ask me.

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