People who don't know how to wear pants

I don’t dole out fashion advice very often, but can’t get rid of the replay of this scene in my head so I’m going to share…and dole. I was waiting in front of the ice rink for my daughter to come out of skating practice when a car pulled in front of me and a chunky teenage boy got out and opened the back to get his hockey equipment.

He appeared to be about 15 and was wearing a black hoodie, red boxers decorated with black and gray Christmas tree shapes and faded blue jeans held just below the middle of his ass by a black belt.

There are just so many things wrong. Where to begin. OK, Listen, chubby white boy, you might think your mother is an out-of-date nag who has nothing better to do than drive your fat butt to hockey practice but she probably knows the lesson that every woman has been learning since the dawn of time – DRESS FOR YOUR BODY TYPE! I know you know that your ensemble was totally not working because you kept pulling the black hoodie down to cover the ugliest-boxers-ever-made (a gift, really? She doesn’t like you) when you should have been pulling your pants UP! And the pants, well, they were wrong on so many levels. A: Wrong kind of faded. I’m not sure how to put this in words, exactly, but they were the faded jeans of a suburban kid who mows the lawn on Saturday and mumbles to himself about how unfair life is every time he walks the garbage to the curb then goes back in the house to play more Halo 3. They were NOT the faded jeans of a kid from the ‘hood who plays basketball every afternoon because he doesn’t want to go home and listen to the kids screaming in the apartment next door. B: The belt…I know I’m over 40 and I’m not “hip” to the fashion you kids are wearing but I thought that the whole jeans-hanging-on-my-ass look didn’t require a belt because it’s supposed to look like YOUR PANTS MIGHT FALL OFF AT ANY MINUTE! And wearing the black belt you borrowed from your dad or wore to your cousin’s wedding last wear with the one suit you own because your mom made you buy it totally clues everyone into the fact that you don’t trust your chunky butt to hold up those jeans.

OK, so I just googled images from the movie Clueless (which came out in 1995, are you SURE this look is still in style?) and the picture was too dark to really tell but the kid could have been wearing a belt with his low slung jeans. HIS belt looked like it was doing its very best to hold his jeans up where they are supposed to be but the combination of skinny butt, one-size-too-big jeans, and a heavy cell phone on one side were just too much for said belt so it gave up and thus – hanging pants. YOUR belt was holding your accurately-sized jeans tight around the fattest part of your ass so that fat squished out over AND beneath the belt. It looked like someone had put a belt on a baked potato and cinched it one notch too tight.

There’s probably no one else who will tell you this, so I’ll do it. You are a chubby white boy from Plymouth, MI not a homey chilaxin’ in your crib. Know who you are, embrace it. Trust me; you will be a lot more comfortable in life. And I won’t have to sit in the carpool lane fighting the urge to either lecture or de-pants you.