Why is exposed female butt cleavage so fashionable these days? I can't go anywhere without seeing some. Whether I'm at the shopping mall, the supermarket or the park, it seems to be on a fairly regular basis that I'll be treated to an attractive woman flashing me something ranging from a quarter to a half moon.
This seems to be fairly de rigueur these days for many young women: low-cut jeans, thong-bikini underwear and a tattoo that is strategically placed right above the derriere. As a social scientist, Mr. Right, could you please conduct a survey of 10 to 20 young women who have these kinds of fashion sensibilities and just ask them: Why? Why do they dress (or undress) this way? Is this about self-expression? Or is this about conformity and being trendy? Is this to help them attract guys? Or is this to torture guys? ("You can look at what I have but you can't have any! Ha! Ha!")
As a child, I never would have imagined that the condition once known as Plumber's Butt Crack would someday become such a popular fashion statement for so many young women.
Personally, I have very mixed feelings about this relatively new phenomenon. On the one hand, as a heterosexual male, I do enjoy these occasional glimpses of female butt flesh. But, on the other hand,how am I supposed to concentrate in my Information Technology class when just a few seats away from me there's an attractive woman who, every time she leans over slightly, allows me to sneak a peek at some delightful cheeks?
As Marvin Gaye once asked, "What's going on?"
No ASSumptions
No ASSumptions: What's going on? I'll tell you what's going on: We're witnessing the decline of Western Civilization one inch of gluteal cleft at a time. And I'm loving every minute of it! I haven't done the field research you requested; I'm much more of a mindless-speculation-from-afar kind of guy. But I did talk to my next-door neighbor, a teenage girl who shows her ass on a regular basis, and she says she does it because "it's sexy but not too sexy." There you have it: a young woman's desire to light a fire without starting a conflagration. And the butt, despite its use by various sexual adventurers, retains an element of neutrality. Yes, it's a sex organ, should you require it to be - so's your elbow, for that matter - but it's also, you know, your butt.
Actually, it's Jennifer Lopez's butt and Britney Spears' butt. They're given a lot of the credit/blame for bums having become the new breasts, Lopez by supplying what every hip-hop artist had previously only dreamed about and Spears by hopping around on stage in that jeans-thong concoction known as a whale tail, where the panties seem to perform their own wedgie. Jeans manufacturers, never ones to miss out on a trend they probably invented, converted their entire operations to the production of hipsters, bumsters, low-riders, whatever you want to call them, to the point where I think it's basically impossible these days to buy a pair of jeans that covers your hip bones. Meanwhile, "coin slot" has become a fashion term.
Outrageous? God, yes. But no more so than various other fashion trends of the last 3,000 years. A mere 100 years ago, women were attaching bustles to their rear ends for that baby's-got-back look. And a mere 40 years ago, Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison were prancing around in pants worn so low they were closer to leggings. (And Morrison's were so tight you could tell his religion.) Where will it end? I've always thought pubic hair would be the final frontier. Now I wonder. Maybe we'll just keep going until...well, as we used to say, "Taint nothin' but a thang."
Bummed out? The butt of jokes? A total ass? Write to: Mr. Right, Isthmus, 101 King St., Madison, WI 53703. Or call 608-251-1206, ext. 152. Or email mrright@isthmus.com.
