Kindy Crutch

BY Lyndal Walker

I’m a little perplexed by the boys getting around in tight jeans slung so low only a regular Viagra could keep them up. It’s kindy crutch, but for boys. Kindy crutch is where the crutch of your stockings creeps down the middle of your thighs. It does remind you of the days when going up stairs, you proceeded up the next step only when both feet were on the previous one.

It’s a stultifying fashion faux pas. I understand the baggy jeans slung low with boxer shorts above. That’s about there being no belts in jail, right? It’s an American street culture thing, yeah? But as for tight jeans, I don’t think that Tsubi ‘Dee Dees’ are standard issue in the US jail system.

The tight, low-slung jean for lads is a relatively recent development in comparison with the ancient history of the low jean for ladies, which is in its sixth undignified year. Once upon a time, not so long ago, I was a shopgirl and flogged many of those dangerously low cut Sass and Bides. Back in 2001, crack was still a novelty. For months, when I said “how are you going in there?” to ladies trying on a pair of ‘east village hipsters’, the standard response was to open the change-room curtain and swing their backside around to me to demonstrate that indeed, their crack was exposed. I couldn’t have seen more g-strings if I were working at the Men’s Gallery. Back then, they had proper fashion appeal. They were part of the return of the jean. They were daring and controversial.

But now, everyone’s given them a go. And I’m sick of it! Fed up! Over it! Had enough! I’m not a jeans wearer, so it’s not that I’m sick of my bum sticking out over the top of my jeans – it’s been safely covered up all this time. I am, however, sick of other people’s bums. I feel hope in my heart now, though. I have finally seen enough high-waisted jeans being worn that I think it’s more than just a niche backlash. I think they’re even being worn by women who haven’t read ‘Female Chauvinist Pigs’. They show off nice curves, they make a feature of the waist rather than the muff(in). They’re elegant rather than in-your-face boob-job sexy. They’re comfortable without being tracksuit pants. They give an air of confidence rather than an air of desperation. They say, “I’m hot and I don’t have to bare it all for you to see that.”

I’ve waited for crack to go away since 2001. I’ve been relatively patient. I haven’t firebombed Sass and Bide headquarters or Claude Maus. I’ve not hurled abuse at people in the street. I’m not, by nature a patient person. It’s one of the reasons I love fashion. Next, next, next. There’s always something new and my ADD is dealt with, not by Ritalin like the next gen, but like the old fashion, with new fashion.

When you’re a kid, you want to get bigger. You want to get bigger because when you’re bigger you can chose your own clothes and stay up til 9pm and hang out in McDonalds with your friends after school. Then eventually you can go to uni and get drunk at lunchtime instead of going to lectures and you can live in a house with lots of other people and never wash the dishes. Then you can get a girl/boyfriend and you can move in together and be D.I.N.Kys. Whoa! No way. That’s too far. Lets just stop at getting regular sex and sometimes washing the dishes. Really, that’s big enough.

We extend this resistance to getting ‘bigger’ to our favourite bands, stores, fashion labels, cafes and bars. We hate them when they get bigger too. We behave as if associating ourselves with a more established business or popular fashion is tantamount to buying a Holden station wagon or having our superannuation mature. So we immerse ourselves in youthful pursuits like the latest fashion (not some old one which has been around for three months or something) where the constant newness can maintain the illusion that nothing progresses or actually gets deeper, or bigger. Things can keep being new new new and you don’t have to commit to anything serious, like wearing your runners for more than one season.

Might this more dignified approach to jeans and bums denote that we are going to get ‘bigger’ after all? No, I’d say not. This is actually an ultimate fashion moment. It’s an all out, take no prisoners, backlash. It’s not that the waists on jeans have got a little higher. They’re verging on being strapless overalls. People will be saying they always hated low-waisted jeans. They’ll cut them out of photos like a bad boyfriend. And really, how mature is that? Denying history is surely not a sign of getting ‘bigger’. When you’re five and want to get bigger, no one expects that you’re going to say “Mummy, I want to get bigger and accept the past and its consequences”.

Even if we do have a Holden station wagon and kiddie seats in the back, fashion can give the illusion nothing else ever grows up. It may be one of the few areas in life that you can just abandon, without consequences. It’s always new and as soon as it gets ‘big’, you can walk away with disgust, hands in the air, denying any part in it whatsoever.

But really, I never did wear low-waisted jeans. I don’t even like jeans, really, you’ll find no evidence of me participating in it. I always hated them. Really, it’s true. I’m not even going to wear high-waisted ones either.