“A fad is simply a form of ugliness so utterly unbearable that we have to change it every six months.”, once said the writer Oscar Wilde, a deep connoisseur of the trends of Victorian England, with a sensitive eye on the aspirational tyranny of trends. Fashion, one of the most dictatorial, pretentious and fascinating social phenomena in popular culture, has a 20-year cycle. Every two decades the garments, accessories and combinations that used to cause obsession, then revulsion and even embarrassment, return to the arena. The massification process is slow but constant, and goes from the catwalks of haute couture to the coat racks of Avellaneda after a season.
Therefore, it is not surprising that a few years ago we began to glimpse, in the distance, the comeback of two two thousand year old trends that ditched (the ditch) and the subjectivity of millions of adolescents and their links with their bodies at the dawn of the millennium. At first, many of us resisted his return; however, we knew it was inevitable. Especially when influencers like Kylie Jenner (the youngest of the Kardashian clan), the Hadids, Hailey Bieber or the regional Tini Stoessel or Lali began to wear them in their Instagram outfits.
Yes, we are talking about the infamous shot low. And to a lesser extent (as a logical continuation) the ultra skinny bikini bottoms. In short: two garments that put the magnifying glass on two areas popularly understood as problematic and defining beauty; understood in hegemonic terms, of course. Either you are on one side or the other of the fuse: or you have a skinny belly to use the low shot or “it does not give you the body”. But now, there’s even more! Either you have a Barbie-sized vulva to put on those thongs that barely cover your lips or, if you’re a model, there’s no other choice: you have to edit it with photoshop. That’s right: no region of the body read as feminine is exempt from an increasingly inquisitive scrutiny; not even the visible bulge of the daddy which is inevitably marked with the mesh.
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Those who lived their childhood and adolescence in the early 2000s (like this chronicler) will remember some of these trends that were replicated endlessly on the air screen, MTV, MuchMusicthe type magazines For Teens either Rebel way; or the video clips of pop stars, ranging from Gwen Stefany to fellow countryman Daniela Herrero. The Bandanas, who used the homonymous accessory that was all the rage among teens; the necklaces adorned with plastic pacifiers; the little buckles and thousands of little tails in her hair; the one-shoulder shirts or color combinations that still sting, such as brown and pink (aesthetic cruelty) or the controversial apple green with turquoise: the tones that completely decorated the writer’s room.
However, of all those two-thousander trends that also made a dent in makeup, such as frozen eyes (shimmering eyeshadow) or ultra-lined lips with very fine eyebrows (a la Pamela Anderson), one was truly iconic: a true culture reset. We are talking, as we have already said, of the shot low. High-waisted pants that barely covered the border between pubic hair and paunch and bordered on the edge of the butt crease were not only a 2000s fad, but basically the only jeans and pants option available at the time. . It was either that or the tailors, very popular among older adults but, naturally, caused rejection by adolescents who wanted to look “cool” and sexy. There was no intermission. On the shelves it was that, or nothing.
However, this trend did not arise from a cabbage. The accentuation on the hip came and went over the centuries, as can be seen in the Charleston look of the 1920s. the 60’s and the 70’s they were all the rage in hippie and disco culture, and were worn by characters like Cher, Jimmy Hendrix or Janis Joplin; until revived in the early 2000s after the reign of what we now know as “mom-jeans”: high waist and loose cut. It is no coincidence, in turn, that in 2008-2009, that iconic trend of Britney Spears has been saturated and, immediately, the shot has escalated to the throat … making the low shot immediately something outdated.
However, as we already anticipated at the beginning of this note, which is taking the tone of a treatise, this trend had a problematic and even dangerous counterpart. Just as the corsets that were worn during the colony made it difficult to breathe and even moved organs from place, the low waist, from squeezing the belly so much, left an indelible mark below the hip that still remains on the body of thousands of users. They held on with magic and will. Sitting meant looking like a plumber fixing a pipe. Some remember starting to shave their pubic hairs because these jeans naturally exposed them.
However, the truly torturous thing was that exposed the belly completely; a stigmatized area, if any. Those who had it flattened them, of course. The rest, when it came time to sit at the school desks, had no choice but to cover it with a diver over their thighs, to prevent the “floaters” from protruding: a shame that had to be hidden at all costs. Needless to say, it was a source of TCAs for an entire generation, who did the impossible (and the most self-damaging thing) to wear them like Christina Aguilera or Lusiana Lopilato. The future has already arrived and, once again, you have to deal with its implications. Will the feminist journey, hand in hand with fat activism, be able to dispute these senses?
But now not only the low waist forces ultra flat bellies, but those bellies are combined with non-existent vulvas, hygienic, without volume; as shown by Kylie Jenner in her networks. The ultra-narrow bikinis in the style of Pamela Anderson or Yuyito González are resurrecting from the shadows in cool showrooms in Palermo with names like “Lola panties” or “Malla Ibiza”, generic names for swimsuits 2 centimeters in diameter on the front.
However, as Bob Dylan says, (although everything comes back), times have changed. Social networks offer a terrain of collective convergence to challenge these trends. “Very comfortable, you only see the back of the uterus”, “Thanks for the idea, now I know what to do with the chinstraps that I had left over from the pandemic”, “It is only usable for Barbie’s cuca”, “In the first wave I was left with my lips in the wind”, “The panties are designed for you to sunbathe in the parts that you could never do it”, “When will the comfort to be on the beach? Being uncomfortable for the pool or the sea has gone out of style”; are some of the more than 350 comments left by users on a post about an ultra-deep bikini from the My Fair brand, which instantly became a book of complaints.
The problem is not whether they exist or not. It is not about policing trends or those who use them. The problem, as always, is that these garments They only come in three sizes.: María Becerra, Lali Esposito or Tini Stoessel. They trigger the pressure to infinity to have, once again, ultra flat bellies and now also mega small vulvas. They return, once again, to divide waters between the beautiful and the shameful, to put the magnifying glass on the bodies; especially between the under 20. And the question that remains stinging: do men also have to go into the sea or walk down the street with clothes that barely cover their pubic hair? This question answers itself.
