The silver ball begins to drop in downtown San Francisco and everyone in the crowd begins to scream: ten, nine, eight...three, two, one…but instead of Sarah Durkin getting her much anticipated New Year's Eve kiss, she looks up to see no lips puckered up to hers, but a woman's butt crack staring into her eyes.
“I saw these teenage boys laughing at some girl's butt crack showing,” 16-year-old Durkin says. “They ran over to put a quarter in there. I guess a penny for your thoughts, but some serious change is needed for the butt crack exposure phenomenon to end.”
Since the re-birth of low-rise jeans around 1995, America is in the throes of a crack epidemic. On the street, on television, even in Bay Area offices, women of all ages and sizes are wearing tight, low-slung, butt-hugging jeans and pants that hit at, or often far below, the hip.
The trend isn't new, however. Low-rise jeans date back to the 1969 Woodstock days when they were known as “hip-huggers.”
“It's obvious when things come back into style, they were always great to begin with,” San Francisco State University Liberal Studies junior Crystal Cautillo says. “I love low-rise jeans because they actually look good on me. I hate the high-rise mom jeans. They make your ass look flat and the rest look lumpy. Why would I want pants up to my boobs?”
Yet, the real problem with extremely low-riding jeans is they're impractical. Sitting is difficult; if you can't find a chair with a closed back, you have to tie a shirt around your waist (always attractive) or risk scandalizing the room. If you drop something or need to tie your shoe, abandon all hope because bending over with dignity is close to impossible. You must perfect the art of squatting, back straight, head up as though preparing to curtsy.
“Why lie? I show my butt crack on a frequent basis,” SF State Liberal Studies junior Katie Hegoas says. “I buy expensive panties, so I might as well sport them.”
Despite how incredibly delicious low-rise jeans may be, they could be dangerous to your health.
According to the Canadian Medical Association Journal in 2001, low-rise jeans can cause a condition called meralgia paresthetica, characterized by numbness or tingling in the thighs caused by a pinched nerve located at the hip. Left untreated, the numbness can become permanent.
“Fashion over pain is always my motto,” Hegoas says. “The possible side effects could be serious, but they are not serious enough for me to stop wearing my low-rise beauties.”
Gasoline, a Brazilian company, has created Down2There jeans that feature a bungee cord, which allows the wearer to lower her pants as she sees fit, as though adjusting Venetian blinds.
For SF State BECA senior Ryan Donk and his buddies, seeing a girl's thong has become a normality, thanks to companies like Gasoline.
“I would say that every other girl wearing jeans has their underwear sticking out,” Donk says. “Reds, blues, pinks, polka-dots and lace, I see it all throughout the course of the day. There is no wondering or mystery anymore. Girls strut their stuff for all to see.”
“What can I say, sex sells,” Cautillo says. “Having low-rise jeans is one thing, but having too low-rise of jeans is another. Showing your plumber's ass crack is just plain dirty and trashy.”
Until the fashion world creates a new phenomenon that woos all the milkshakes to the yard, it looks like low-rise jeans are here to stay, full moon and all.
