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!

Seize the dishevelled day

Putting on clothes that look crisp and tailored and clean is such a time-consuming pain in the ass, isn't it? I mean, I'm super busy, like all the time. I can't waste precious moments fiddling with fancy trimmings like zippers and buttons and stuff. Drawstrings. Elastic waistbands. Velcro! These are the mark of efficient clothes that understand my time constraints.  

You know who feels me? These guys:




They just get it, you know? The last thing I want to do in the morning is mess around with cumbersome trousers, uncomfortable skirts or confusing dresses. I mean, am I expected to, like, shower too? No time, man. I need to roll out of bed and run out the door without having to worry about things like hygiene and self-respect. The most important thing in the world to me is being comfortable at all times, no matter what.

I look at those suckers on the street rushing to their meetings in coordinated suits with button fastenings, lace-up leather shoes and colour-coordinated accessories, and I laugh out loud. Those are sucker clothes. I see the look of envy in their eyes as they watch me shuffle down the sidewalk, bedraggled and utterly unconcerned with societal standards in my PajamaJeans. They wish they could be as liberated and footloose as me. I've got news for them: I am the future. Seize the dishevelled day, and you too can be free!

God bless America.    

By all means, aim high. Just dress the part.

I'm just gonna come right out and say it: I don't like sports. And I really don't get why people watch them. Every now and then if there's nothing to watch on TV — and when I say nothing, I mean no Simpsons, no Jeopardy, no Seinfeld or Friends reruns, and the Food Network is running a Giada De Laurentiis show — I may stop for a few minutes on, say, a tennis tournament or a Formula 1 race. But that's only under extreme duress. And don't even talk to me about soccer. My father's burning passion for the sport has completely soured me on it. I remember as a child waking on Sunday mornings to find him in the family room watching one soccer game on TV and listening to another on his transistor radio. I firmly believe that if my father were forced to choose between his children and a soccer match in a Sophie's Choice kind of situation his knee-jerk response would be "Who's playing?"

I've tried to relate to the sports lover's high, but I simply cannot comprehend how a goal or a match point or a touchdown can elicit the same ecstasy as scoring Lanvin pumps at 65 percent off. Where's the personal satisfaction in a win that had nothing to do with you?

I don't really watch the Olympics either, which is a statement that often results in scowls and gasps from my friends and family. Just because it's on an international stage, it doesn't mean the sports are any less sporty. I'm proud of our fine Canadian athletes and I rejoice when someone far younger and more disciplined than me brings home a gold. But I won't lie, when watching an Olympic event, I'm usually more fixated on the better looking competitor and the snazzier outfit. Which brings me to a question that's been on my mind for days: was Seth Wescott, the American snowboarder who won the gold in snowboard cross, wearing ripped jeans? Or were they pants designed to resemble ripped jeans? Because if it's the former, I'm gonna need to step in.

Wearing jeans to the Olympics is like wearing Chanel to a Dior show. It's disrespectful. From their beginnings in the 8th century BC, the Olympic Games have stood for precision, excellence and cleanliness. Why do you think torch bearers to this day still wear white? Those Greeks are a fastidious people! I doubt Ancient Greece ever saw a rogue runner in a plaid toga or a chariot with graffiti scrawled on its side. So Wescott shouldn't sully the good name of European sartorialism with ripped jeans. Oh sure, snowboarding is an x-treme sport and snowboarders by extension are X-TREME, dude! They thumb their noses at conventional skiers in tight pants and Jean Claude Killy sweaters by wearing their clothes as big and baggy as possible. Unkempt and slack-jawed, they amble up to the chairlift with one boot strapped onto their board and the other dragging them along in a sloppy, simian fashion. It's not what one would call graceful. 

My cousins and I used to make fun of people in jeans on the slopes when we were younger. We called them yetties. I don't know why. But they were usually beginner skiers who after a couple of runs on the bunny hill would hit the steeper slopes and barrel down in a semi-snowplow all the while yelling a raucous "yahoo!" as warning of their unstoppable approach. There was something so local-yokel about their baggy, high-waisted 501s tucked into a pair of rental boots. As far as I'm concerned, artfully distressed and fashionably slim though Wescott's jeans may have been, he still looks like a yettie to me.

Of course, if he was in fact wearing pants made to look like jeans, then...well...congratulations, dude. That's, like, x-tremely cool.