The first time I saw pants sagging below a fellow’s butt, showing his underwear, I assumed it was a mistake and let him know his pants were slipping.
That was in 1992, and little did I imagine that it was on purpose, and not only that, but it would remain an issue 32 years later.
I mean, really, all the other objections aside – aren’t “styles” and “fashions” supposed to change with the generations, as the young people rebel against what the previous generation wore?
Granted, and thank goodness, we are not seeing as many butts now as we were doing a few years ago. That practice is dying down, but it’s not gone yet.
A few days ago, as I was walking into the library I walked past a young man talking on the phone.
“Seven hundred dollars,” I heard him say. (He was certainly not keeping his voice down.) “Mama want money, right? She not helping to get me money.”
Yes, that’s exactly what he said, because as soon as I saw him and then heard him, I thought, “a column is coming out of this,” so I wrote his words down verbatim. No, I don’t know what he wanted the money for, but I sure felt sorry for his mama.
I was in the library to do two or three hours’ worth of research on the microfilm reader, and he was there almost as long as I was.
A little later I walked down a hallway and heard a very loud voice coming from around the corner. It was him again, still talking about wanting money. This was during the day, by the way, when a man who wants money either is at work, or at home sleeping or doing household chores – or in the library to check out books – because he works a night shift.
Even later, he came to sit down near me, still on the phone. He needed to plug in his phone. He was polite, I’ll give him that, as he asked if he could pull the surge protector extension cord that was closer to where I was working over toward his direction.
Then he sat down.
That butt, covered only in a thin fabric of underwear (trust me, I saw more of that underwear than anyone needed to, and it was thin), was on the chair.
Alarm bells rang out!
How, in three decades of knowing the world is full of men who don’t cover their butts in public, did it not occur to me that those very same nearly naked butts were sitting on chairs that you and I also sit on?
Germs and cooties!
Awful.
Now I am afraid to sit down in public.
But women are not immune to appalling pants mistakes either, as a woman at the checkout counter soon reminded me.
Women don’t need to be wearing skin-tight stretchy pants, and most especially, not in flesh tones. It’s not a good look. Stretchy pants cling to every bump and lump of cellulite and make the woman look naked from the bottom down.
Those women probably think they look fine, when catching a brief front-view of themselves in the mirror as they are holding their stomach in and standing with good posture.
It’s quite a shock to encounter one of them in public, especially from behind. That past-middle-aged frumpy woman at the checkout counter probably had no idea whatsoever what she looked like from behind (and shame on her if she was aware and went out like that anyway).
I’m not here making fun of frumpy past-middle-aged women, either, since I am one myself. However, I dress according to my age. In fact, in the fall I bought a lovely and proper light colored pair of business pants. They looked great from the front but at the second or third time I was wearing them I realized that they were nearly flesh-colored and in horror I got rid of them right away.
I am just waiting and waiting and waiting for the next fashion rebellion. Surely after so many years of sloppy dressing, some generation at some point is going to see their only suitable rejection of the previous generation’s style to be dressing decently and properly so that they actually look good.
