Enough with the LOW RISE PANTS already!

Okay, so it's been a while since I shopped for clothes in a REAL store, i.e not a Goodwill. I must say, that the experience is highly overrated -- the real stores that is -- and exhausting.

I am apparently focusing all of my anxiety about my impending world travel on finding just the right pair of pants. At least I am aware that this is the arbitrary conduit for my neurotic energy. We have been told by the tour guide to bring synthetic fabric, quick-drying clothing, as we will be mostly hand-washing our clothes as we go, and allowing them to dry overnight, so spare the cotton. We will be staying in Ch'an (Zen) monasteries when we are not staying in hotels, walking lots, and out and about in planes trains and automobiles.

I am on a mission to find out whether it is indeed too much to ask to find a pair of pants: Simple, yoga-style pants, synthetic-y fiber (little to no cotton or hemp, please), elastic-y and maybe even some draw-string waist, roomy, flowy, not too jock-y, not too fancy. I even broadened my criteria to include zippered pants, and even started looking for some new jeans. But the main quest was for just some plain black pants -- and here's the hard part -- for an exactly average sized thirty-six-year-old woman.

I went to four or five stores. Tried on armloads of pants. And I have a question: WHO ARE THESE LOW RISE PANTS FOR? Because they are not for someone with hips and a round butt! They are also not for someone who actually moves during their day. Or sits. Or crouches or kneels. Or wears regular underwear.

The zippers for some of the pants were about two inches long. They were often waaaaay too tight around the hips and butt. Most of the pants produced that unfortunate effect known as "muffin-top." This is where the waist of the pants grabs hold of you near the pelvic bones, and the 2-3 inch remainder of your Goddess-given female waist sort of hangs over the sides of the pants.
And if the pants' waist was big enough around not to grab quite that tightly, then crouching or bending would create a gap between the lower back and the pants into which you could fit a small animal. Having pants like these requires a completely new underwear wardrobe, otherwise, "Hi! Here's two inches worth of my Jockey for Her bikini."

I mean, can't you just see it? Bowing reverently, sitting on the floor, giving China a big dose of crack?I was pleased to see that an article about this sad state of affairs has already been written much more eloquently than I ever could. In Slate.com, Amanda Fortini expresses similar sentiment in "The Woes of Low Rise Pants." The part that really amazed me is that she expressed this in the year 2003. And in the article, she traces the history of the hip-hugger, tracking this most recent un-killable zombie-esque fashion incarnation to the year 1995!

I was kvetching about this at work, and one of my colleagues, a 26-year-old, and very fashionable young woman said to me -- truly without trying to be offensive -- that this was a "generation thing." Ruh-ro. This colleague expressed how she really hates those other kind of pants with the "super-high waists," motioning to an area of her "waist" somewhere near her breasts, and that she probably would never buy them.

Now come on, I don't want to wear my pants over my ribs or anything -- just in the approximate neighborhood of my waist, defined as the part that measures smaller than my hips. I'm naturally long-waisted (read short-legged). I look really good in shirts with darts, somewhat tailored jackets and dresses -- anything that comes in a bit at the waist.
Cuz I'm a woman. W-O-M-A-N.

We did agree, however, that the highly unflattering eighties peg-leg pants must be stopped at all costs.