by Rose Madeline Mula

Warning!

A band of malicious practical jokers has insidiously infiltrated the halls of high fashion. That’s the only possible explanation for what has been happening the last few years.

'Distressed denim' (right); Wikimedia Commons, Winliu21

Don't you think it's strange that so many women are wearing jeans with gaping, ragged holes and frayed hems?  Stranger still, they are buying them in that condition from high-end boutiques. Marketed as "distressed," these garments command much higher prices than their pristine, unstressed/well-adjusted cousins.  Furthermore, women are being brainwashed into buying their jeans at least two sizes too small, requiring enough pulling and tugging to get into so as to distress them even more.

Also sneaking onto the market are pants with ground-in dirt stains.  Those don't seem to have made a serious inroad yet, but it won't be long.  I saw a pair advertised in a chi-chi catalog yesterday at a price that would cover my groceries for two months — and at the organics-only store in the ritzy next town, not at my cut-rate supermarket.      

And who is brainwashing women to risk arrest for indecent exposure by wearing those crotch-high, skin-tight skirts and dresses that bind the torso in wrinkles and make sitting down as challenging as climbing the Matterhorn in six-inch stilettoes — speaking of which, how have so many women have been coerced into cramming their feet into such fiendish footwear?  Even professional models tottering on those tootsie-torturing stilts can't negotiate a catwalk without lurching… staggering … even falling, as documented in Facebook videos.  It isn't pretty.  And painful though those feet may be today, it's nothing compared to the agony they will cause after a decade or two of mistreatment.  I predict a run on wheelchairs in the not-too-distant future; and enough hammertoes, corns, and bunions to guaranty every podiatrist affluence beyond their wildest dreams.

Remember when bare bosoms were visible only in strip clubs, XXX-rated movies, and the pages of "Playboy" and "National Geographic"?  Not anymore. Now bouncing boobies seem to be perfectly acceptable everywhere; and if in rare cases they are constrained by underwear, bra straps no longer must be hidden.

Most mystifying of all, however, is the sudden prominence of derrieres. As far back as I can remember, our goal had always been to make them invisible, or at least as flat and unobtrusive as possible.  If a woman asked her mate, "Does this dress make my rear end look fat" and the answer was "Yes," the dress would immediately be dispatched to Goodwill and the unfortunately truthful mate banished to the dog house.  Today a "No" response to that question would trigger tears and cosmetic surgical butt enhancement.

I recently read that back in the day when women wore skirts and dresses almost exclusively, the wardrobe supervisor on the old Dick Van Dyke Show made a radical proposal that Mary Tyler Moore wear slacks in one scene.  After hours of argument, the producers finally acquiesced — but only on one condition:  The pants could not "cup under."  Today, pants not only cup under, they also cup over, around, and in between.  In addition, they have extended into a whole new dimension, protruding alarmingly and making the rear end look like a well-upholstered end table.  Nowadays, if a woman's derriere doesn't stick out enough to allow her partner to rest his cocktail glass on it while he reaches for an hors-d'oeuvre, he will dump her in a heartbeat for the nearest Kim Kardashian body double.   

It seems that the only fashion rule today is that one look as insanely ridiculous as possible. What's next?  Maybe bulging bellies. That would be great!  I'd finally be in the forefront of a high-fashion trend!  

And I wouldn't even need padding. 

©2018 Rose Madeline Mula for SeniorWomen.com

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