I don't know if this is a normal symptom of being middle aged, but I have no patience for fashion trends anymore. I find myself increasingly irritated every season by the atrocious, unflattering crap that is peddled as the latest must-have fashion. Before I go further, I want to apologize upfront because I am going to slam some popular fashions - and you may wear one or both of these (perhaps even proudly) - so don't take it personally, okay? To each his own - I am sure if you saw what occupies my closet, you'd find plenty to slam as well. Disclaimer over.My fashion disgust started with capri pants which, my mother told me, were called pedal-pushers and clam-diggers back they first came into fashion several decades ago. Well, since we all the know the fashion industry is often short on creativity and would rather recycle the same silly things over and over again rather than be creative and invent something new, to my horror capri pants came back into style about 8-10 years ago and every spring since then they have come back again and again, filling pants racks in every store, giving women from coast to coast the look of tree stumps for legs. Capri pants are long overdue for a slow, painful death because in my estimation, they are floods, plain and simple. This is the song kids used to sing when I was in junior high to anyone whose pant legs rode even a quarter inch above their shoe laces:
The flood is over, the land is dry
Why do you wear your pants so high?
Maybe I was traumatized by this song and my hatred of capri pants is a symptom of PTSD. In any event...
When my man, Tim Gunn (of Project Runway), universally condemned capri pants as unflattering on practically every woman, I shouted HURRAY from the rooftops. Thank God I am not alone and somebody feels about them as I do! Yet, to my dismay, they just will not DIE. They still fill most of the pant racks at every store in the spring and summer and woe to the woman (i.e. me) who would like to buy a full-length pant. Happy hunting.
The latest horror show is the babydoll top (a.k.a. maternity smock) trend. It came into style last spring and I was horrified to discover just the other day that the trend has resurfaced like an unkillable cockroach, infesting 90% of the square footage dedicated to women's tops in every clothing store.
Here is my beef about the maternity top trend: why would any woman who is not pregnant, want to look pregnant? Being pregnant = being BIG and round, right? Most women do not want to look big and round, yet the babydoll/maternity top (a style which provides women with a big and round silhouette) is back with a vengeance this spring, which tells me the trend must be selling pretty well. This despite the fact that I have yet to see a woman (aside from 6 feet tall, 100 pound runway models) who don't look about 20 pounds heavier in this style of top. I have been utterly perplexed by the ongoing popularity of this trend.
That is until I put my Childfreedom thinking cap on (the one with the little propellers) and thought about this a little more deeply. Could there be a psychological explanation for this seemingly inexplicable consumer behavior? Perhaps there exists a subconscious desire in most women to be pregnant and this fuels their desire for the babydoll/maternity top. Where would such a subconsious desire come from? Well, let's see: pregnant women are fawned over, celebrated, told they are radiant, beautiful, glowing, miraculous and showered with gifts. All the popular celebrity and women's magazines are chock full of photo spreads of beautiful, sexy, pregnant celebrities in stylish maternity clothes. Pregnancy = beauty, virtue and accomplishment in our culture and now, even sexiness. What woman doesn't want to be beautiful, virtuous, accomplished and sexy?
You've undoubtedly heard the saying that art is an expression of culture. Well, this is my theory for today: the maternity top trend is an outward expression of the pregnancy obsession that has our culture in its death grip.
Perhaps I am overanalyzing. I do tend to do that sometimes and after all, fashion isn't generally that deep. But this theory makes a heck of a lot more sense to me than the idea that women just want to look fatter.
