Low Rise Jeans

I was at a birthday party for a friend's son's birthday, who also happens to be friends with my son, when I looked around the room of eclectic parents from Brooklyn. There were the really old looking parents, a few with adopted girls from China, there were the Lesbian moms, and then there were the hip-40 something moms dressed in the uniform for this group: low rise jeans, t-shirty top, and some kind of boots on their feet. I know this uniform intimately since I am one of these 40-something moms, who tries to be hip.

There was one woman, in particular, who made me reassess my group's efforts to dress like we were still 20-something, or worse, 30-something when our lives were much different than they are today. This woman, who was quite tall, had on jeans much too tight, and much too low on the hips to hide the lumpiness of her 40-something body after a few kids. The assemble would have been bad enough with the jeans if she'd thrown on a baggy sweater on top, but instead she went for the whole shebang and wore a thin, body-hugging t-shirt, the kind that really highlights back fat, stomach rolls, and other unattractive sights of our age.

In essence, she was dressed as if she were still young. Yes, I know the new 40 is the old 30, but give me a break. Our chronological age is that of a 40 year old, no matter how our generation, or each generation, seems to be in a constant regression. Might I add that this regression of each generation claiming to be a decade younger, in spirit and attitude, is a mass market push by the Baby Boomers to stave off the eventuality that is facing them: a lifetime of golf in sunny climes, bingo games, and complaining about the chronic aches and pains of old age.

It's true we, women my age, look far more youthful than our mothers would have at our age. We tend to wear our hair in styles that wouldn't mark us as moms or matrons. (This dressing as if one is much younger is de rigeur in Southern California where every mom walks around in hip-hugging jeans) We take better care of ourselves, or so we're led to believe. But more important than the physical differences in maintenance, we are just more immature in our thinking, perhaps adding to this sense of perpetual adolescence that seems to cling to women my age.

Is this a result of us having put off those responsibilities of marriage, children, and house till we were much older than our mothers? Whatever the various causes, I sat and reevaluated the slew of hip hugging jeans in my own drawer at home as I watched this mom doing that familiar tug of pulling up jeans too low on their hips. I realized it might be time to put them away for good, relegated to a life of high waisted jeans.