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Tuesday, Nov 24, 2009
Butt cleavage is not just for the plumber anymore.
May 28, 2002 | Just a few years ago, it was considered in bad taste to reveal your butt crack. Getting cheeky was an icky faux pas reserved for plumbers and the odd teenage boy with unresolved pant-to-boxer issues. Now, however, the tender cleft is in your face. Girls in low-slung jeans sit insouciantly on bar stools, "presenting" their rears like primates in heat. The jeans tug downwards, the butt balloons upwards, and at least an inch of crack blooms above the belt loops. Some have tattoos just above the crack, a titillating invitation to stare. Others brandish g-strings, which ride above the waistband -- a hint of Monica Lewinsky.
The posterior has, intentionally or not, recently become the focal point of fashion and pop culture alike: The butt crack is the new cleavage, reclaimed to peek seductively from the pants of supermodels and commoners alike. Blame it on J.Lo and the rise of booty-centric hip-hop culture; or point your finger at the return of the low-rise jean, a familiar fashion rehash that has exposed millions of unwitting lower clefts.
Perhaps, having grown weary of nipples and thighs, we simply needed a new body part to fetishize. And maybe that's not a bad thing. It's hard to oppose a trend that extols a generous posterior. But like so many trends that spring from retail, this one comes with a punishing beauty protocol. We're going to expose your ass now, the fashion industry has said, and it had better look good.
This is a rather abrupt change from the recent decade's parade of anemic asses. But the behind does have a glorious and full fashion history. Consider the corset, designed to show off the bosom and ample rear by cinching in the waist; or the bustle, which was all about giving baby some back even if she didn't have any to speak of. The round behind lost some momentum after these prosthetically supported heydays, making only rare appearances, often as a bonus body part on the statuesque bods of busty movie stars like Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell. Then it vanished for what seemed like forever, from Twiggy to waif models, from tiny to nonexistent.
Maybe, then, the return of the rear end was inevitable, one more body part cycled through the fashion wayback machine to keep things fresh (and selling like hot cakes). But bootyliciousness also comes to us by way of the street, a byproduct of the mainstreaming of hip-hop culture, and the accidental fallout of the low-cut pant. Every teenager in America has turned on MTV at some point to see serious backsides jumping to a beat while a rapper extols the glories of the booty.("I like the way she shake it in the thong -- OOOHHHWEE!" says Master P.) After "Out of Sight," Jennifer Lopez's butt was the toast of the nation. Suddenly big wasn't bad and fashion was accommodating.
The invention of the thong bikini (and subsequently the pop sensation Sisqo) was the next step in the public blessing of the backside. It was just a short step from tight pants that emphasized the butt, to bathing suits that tanned it, to fashion that exposed the behind altogether.
Not that butt cleavage was an intentional move. It hit the fashion mainstream more as a consequence of the low-rise pant than the brainstorm of Seventh Avenue. Arguably, this coincidence can be blamed on fashion enfant terrible Alexander McQueen who, in 1997, sent models down the runway in bumsters that revealed several risqué inches of butt crack. By last summer, it was impossible to find a pair of jeans that actually covered your hipbones, and the result was a parade of inadequately covered posteriors. It is possible that many among us never intended to expose butt cracks, but the cut of the pants made it inevitable: Simply put, it is impossible to sit down in a pair of low-rise pants without displaying at least an inch of cleft.
Whether the revealed ass-crack was simply a side effect of bad fashion design or a malicious conspiracy on the part of the jeans industry, the jean-buying population bought in. The youth of America seems blithely undisturbed by the fact that they now feel gentle breezes in places where the sun don't usually shine. Meanwhile, at the high end of the trend, risqué haute couture designers like Donatella Versace and McQueen have picked up on the look and are now intentionally dipping their ball gowns a few inches lower to expose the tops and sides of the buttocks.
Fashion pioneer Sharon Stone best embodied this trend, appearing, over the course of this spring, in a dipped-in-the-back Oscar dress that revealed the tip of her butt crack and a sheer-paneled dress that entirely revealed the sides of her behind (and the fact that she wasn't wearing any panties).
In other words: The butt crack has arrived, an affect of lowly citizens and shock-driven fashionistas like Stone and Versace. The butt crack is the new, 21st century kind of sexual fetish: It's naughty and slightly tawdry, but with the soft round charm of a perfect pair of breasts.
