Pull 'em up!

I'm afraid it's got to stop.

This thing with the trousers of the young.

You must have seen them, half-mast isn't the word, sometimes they're barely off the ground.

Now I'm all for fashion, goodness knows I've been a victim myself; gold silk shirt and cravat, anyone? But at least the fashions of days gone by weren't quite so impractical as having your trousers fall down as you try and cross the road (I saw this happen!).

Yes OK, a few people may have fallen off their 9" heels in the seventies and those punk safety-pins were a menace, but most of the clothes stayed in place, the trousers of today have a mind of their own.

Not only are they a danger to road-crossers, or indeed anyone who has to make a quick getaway, but they are a danger to health in other ways. The newspaper this weekend reported the demise of a young lad whose baggy trousers caught around the pedals of his bike causing him to veer into the path of an oncoming car.

There are less drastic health issues too. I recently saw, in the distance, a young (ish) woman standing in the street wearing a pink belt. As I came closer I realised that it wasn't a pink belt but her midriff, which was bright pink with the raw chill of a March morning. Closer still and I had a rather disturbing view of her "builders bottom" as we call it here (ass-crack to you!). Not nice.

My old mum always made sure I was properly wrapped up when I went out on a cold morning lest I get a chill. I guess that woman's kidneys were halfway to deep-frozen by the time she got home.

Young women have generally exhibited this sort of impractical behaviour in the cause of fashion. Queues outside nightclubs in February have always been a festival of goose-pimples as the barely-clad lovelies refuse to make concessions to the season. But at least their tiny hot-pants were properly affixed!

These days though, it's the boys too. In fact they are the worst offenders. Who wants to see what kind of underpants the paper-boy is wearing? At least builders have an excuse, their bellies are so large that the jeans of their youth just aren't the right shape any more, there's not enough material to cover the wobbly expanse. Young, slim men have no such problem, but they go and by a trouser at least four sizes too big and let it perch precariously on what buttocks they have. The unfortunates with minimal buttocks are forever tugging at their garments to prevent collapse.

It may be cool to have the trousers fashionably loose, but to have them round your ankles is always a fashion faux-pas.

So boys and girls, I give you the next fashion accessory... braces!
They will allow anyone to wear the most gigantic trousers possible, without them falling down.

I'm off the flog the idea to Gap.

Later note; Damn! I have just seen a girl walking up the street with braces attached to her jeans, but left dangling down uselessly... I give up!

© Winamop. March 2007

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