Thursday, August 23, 2007

Saving your naughty bits for the MuslimsWants to be a Harajuku Girl but can't dance.

August 1, 2003
Letting it all hang out
Michelle Malkin

How low can we go? I am talking, of course, about today’s waistbands.

If you thought the belly-baring thing was bad enough, take a good look at the sartorial depths to which fashion has now sunk. The Los Angeles Times this week declared it “the summer of the pelvic bone.” Last year’s already obscene low-riders have gone the way of high-water polyester pants.

Today’s hip-huggers have almost nothing but hope to hang onto anymore. The “normal” inseam-to-waist rise of 8 to 9 inches is shrinking faster than Britney Spears’ record sales. To wit, Levi’s has introduced a new line of jeans called “Too Superlow” for women. Upping the ante, or should I say lowering it, the teenage-girl brand Gasoline markets “Down2There” — adjustable low-rise jeans with a built-in bungee cord designed to help the wearer drop her pants to even nastier nadirs.

Canadian teen singer Avril Lavigne’s perilously sagging pants are a global youth phenomenon. “My butt crack showing is like my trademark,” she gracefully explained to a music reporter. Salon.com writer Janelle Brown approves: “[T]he butt crack is the new cleavage, reclaimed to peek seductively from the pants of supermodels and commoners alike.”

The late senator and social critic Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s famous phrase “Defining deviancy down” has taken on a whole new meaning.

[...]

What will it take to convince the current cohort of exhibitionistas that sleaze is not sexy — that less is not always more, that low is low-class? If Generation X-rated can’t be persuaded to cover up out of moral necessity, perhaps they will listen to medical authority. A warning about the health hazards of low-rise pants was published in the Canadian Medical Asssociation six months ago. According to Dr. Malvinder Parmar, a painful condition called “meralgia paresthetica” is causing wearers of hip-huggers to experience “tingling or a burning sensation” in the thighs.

Dr. Parmar’s treatment: four to six weeks in — the horror! — loose-fitting dresses. Must have been worse than swallowing cod liver oil.

Avril and Britney and Brad need to show their fans that a little extra fabric is not a death sentence. The late Kate Hepburn melted hearts while fully clothed in turtlenecks and roomy, belted trousers. She was a “hottie” who showed us her cheekbones, and left the rest where it should be left: to the imagination.

I noted the Muslim student protest of US pop star Gwen Stefani’s scheduled Malaysia concert earlier this month. Well, the concert went off without a hitch today. As promised, Stefani behaved nicely for the Islamo-enforcers and covered herself according to the dictates of sharia law:

Gwen Stefani was a good girl, just like she promised.

The 37-year-old pop star wowed fans in Muslim-majority Malaysia on Tuesday, performing in costumes that showed almost no skin after Islamic critics claimed that her revealing clothes could corrupt the country’s youth. She burst onto the stage wearing a black leotard under a white short-sleeved shirt and black-and-white striped hot pants suit, with black gloves up to her elbows.

“I am very inspired tonight,” Stefani told some 7,000 cheering fans at an indoor stadium.

She changed costumes for every song, remaining fully covered as she belted out tunes such as “The Sweet Escape,” “Rich Girl,” “Wind it Up” and “Hollaback Girl.” Stefani had promised to dress modestly after the 10,000-member National Union of Malaysian Muslim Students charged that her skimpy outfits and cheeky performances clashed with Islamic values. The opposition Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party also accused her of promoting promiscuity and corrupting the country’s youth. In an interview with Galaxie, a local entertainment magazine, Stefani said she had made many changes for Malaysia, calling it a “major sacrifice.”

“I’ve been in the music industry for 20 years and this is the first time that I’m facing opposition from people who have misunderstood me,” she was quoted as saying.

“I’m not a bad girl,” she said.

No, not a bad girl. Just a dhimmi. That’s all that they’ll let her be...