It’s finally time to say goodbye to the belly. No, not your paunch or mine. I’m talking about the pairing of low-rise jeans with high-rise shirts that made bellybuttons the epicenter of women’s fashion.
The fashion world has caught up with those of us who are tired of seeing women parading in peek-a-belly shirts.
Exhibitionism can never be a substitute for real sensuality. Besides, con-
formity isn’t sexy; individual style is.
Now hip-length shirts have taken over clothing racks. Mini-shirts are nowhere to be found. So if you know someone who still has them in her closet, tell her to keep them there. They’ll be retro in another 30 years.
After six years of the shrunken T-shirt look, it was time to move on.
Any style that requires an unrealistic body type to pull it off may be good for the economy, but it’s bad on our psyche.
Let’s face it: Those tops looked good only on slender young women with flat abs. On everyone else – women over 40, prepubescent girls, chubby girls, stick-thin girls – they should’ve been a fashion don’t.
But that’s the problem with a one- size-fits-all trend. It was fine at nightclubs but looked tacky if worn at school, the mall, church, work (unless you worked at a bar).
In memorializing the style, I think of how it affected women’s views of themselves and the time they spent primping. Being in shape is smart; spending hours trying to get flat abs is silly.
The style spawned the six-pack-ab craze. Women’s health magazines devoted whole articles on how to get flat stomachs. Drug companies marketed pills that promised to dissolve belly fat. Some of us believed the hype, but most of us got frustrated trying to reach that impossible dream.
How did we devolve to this?
In my mother’s day, people didn’t go to gyms. They walked everywhere.
To get ready for a night on the town, women relied on three beauty tools: lipstick, pressed powder and a lot of hair spray.
Now, primping involves hair highlighting every six weeks and eyebrow waxing once a month.
On top of that, we’re supposed to spend hours doing crunches and avoid carbs past 6 p.m. in an effort to achieve the perfect look. All that me-me-me time can make a woman ber-conscious of how she looks.
Luckily, fashion takes a cue from social and political influences.
Eulanda Sanders-Okine, a professor in the department of design and merchandising at the University of Colorado, says as conversations have shifted to issues of morality and religion, dress has become “a little more conservative.’
That’s the kind of conservatism we should welcome.
Now that we’re zeroing away from belly buttons, maybe women will spend less time at the gym and more time doing something that will make them feel really good: volunteering for a worthy cause.
What’s in store for women: kaftans, hip-length T-shirts, empire-cut shirts and shirt layering, says Brandis Becky, owner of Brandis B. boutique in Cherry Creek North. The idea with layering is to have a band of color peeking from under a T-shirt, to give an added dash of texture and a contrasting hue.
Empire-waist shirts, which gather just under the bosom then flare, are the antithesis of the tight mini-shirts of yesterday.
“The belly button has been such a big deal for the last few years,’ Becky said. “People are over it.’
Myself included.
Contact Cindy Rodr guez at 303-820-1211 or at crodriguez@denverpost.com
