Jeans for tots to poop in

I really didn't want to write a post about the Huggies Jeans diapers. Firstly because I don't have any babies to diaper so I don't really care about technologies — fashion-y or otherwise — in the diapering arena. Secondly, because I think they're simultaneously hilarious and horrifying. But mostly because I don't like to say unpleasant things about babies; they're cute and squishy and defenseless and do not yet possess the ability to scream, "If you make me wear those I'll hate you forever!" (Oh trust me, that day will come.)

However, New York Times journalist Alex Kuczynski left me no choice. Her recent Obsessions column takes the Jeans diapers and uses them as a vehicle to [weakly] illustrate a growing trend of infant-adult role reversal. According to Kuczynski, the Huggies diapers are but a ripple in the menacing ocean of babies-as-grownups/grownups-as-babies that threatens to deluge society, as seen in E*Trade commercials, Three Dots t-shirts, the recession and the obesity epidemic. "The line between adulthood and infancy continues to blur, perhaps because of our national rates of obesity," she writes. "People swollen with fat look like giant babies, the lines and wrinkles pressed from their faces." I'm guessing the fillers that press the wrinkles from her face have nothing to do with wanting to look like a kid herself. In Kuczynski's defense, narcissistic rich ladies aren't considered an epidemic...yet.    

Despite her evident distaste for adult-babies, fat people and the unemployed, Kuczynski bought the denim diapers for her baby. Just like her Botox, her kid isn't part of the problem. Presumably she'll just diaper him in faux-jeans for shits and giggles (pun intended). Personally, I don't like them. I think denim on an infant (faux or otherwise) is weird and tacky, not unlike dressing a five-year-old boy in a tuxedo. There are myriad options in children's clothing out there that will make your babies look like babies and not shrunken versions of you. These kids have plenty of time ahead to dress awkwardly and in ways that will undoubtedly offend me. Why start them off so young? 

Despite it all, though, it's a helluva commercial!