Hands up who's ever felt personally victimised by low-rise jeans?
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Sit down Keira Knightley at the Pirates of the Caribbean premiere in 2003.
Hit the road Paris Hilton then, now and always. With the amount of time I spent being inundated with images of your hip flexors throughout uni I could have graduated as a doctor of physiotherapy instead of just scraping through with an arts degree.
Get into the sea Bella Hadid with your new Off White low-slung denim trousers that cost more than a new Corolla (with non-faulty airbags).
Pants with waistlines that are retreating like low tide are, according to the fashion press, coming back into stores.
Great news for Kath & Kim cosplayers and laser clinics with deals on snail-trail and tramp-stamp territory hair removal packages.
Bad news for me.
I came of age in the early 2000s. An era of Lara Bingle beauty, The Hills and Anna Nicole Smith endorsed diet pills. Blonde and waif-ish was "hot" and low-riders were everywhere - in clubs, in shopping centres and in my chiropractor's waiting room. I was such a slave to the fashion of the time that I'm pretty sure I developed scoliosis while simultaneously trying to contain my dignity and peach emoji-esque derriere while wearing trousers that had a rise the size of a Tic Tac.
This was around the time Hilton's fame (and infamy) was peaking. She was an oversized sunglasses wearing, low-rider jean advocating queen. A statuesque, monosyllabic monarch of the zeitgeist. Her Ladies in Waiting, like Nicole Richie and Kim Kardashian, were always shorter, size 10ish brunettes who, at the time, resembled what women looked like in reality instead of reality TV.
While things, like the societal ranking of Hilton's lemmings, have changed thanks to contouring, green juice addictions and the Valencia filter, back then the uniform required you to show off your muffin top. Too bad I preferred eating muffins - the plural is not a typo.
With the amount of money I, a broad with legs my grandmother once proclaimed at Christmas as "thick", wasted at Forever New trying to emulate women like Hilton, I could now be living large in a Bondi penthouse, having my smashed avo and eating it too. My legs comfortably ensconced in activewear, because it is 2017 and leggings are pants.
But ... jeans with abbreviated waistlines are making a comeback.
The triggering of my bad body image started at the latest international shows, when Alexander McQueen, Tommy Hilfiger and Roberto Cavalli sent models down the runway in pants that hugged the mons pubis. The looks are now hitting the street style blogs thanks to Bella and Gigi Hadid, who are also models, and Gisele Bundchen - a bona fide supermodel - with a strict diet that is as inspiring as the Trump administration.
"In every case on the catwalk, the low-rise trousers were shown with miniature crop tops to really accentuate that section of the midriff that we haven't seen for a decade," Harpers Bazaar reported.
"Do not despair, however, if you don't have the abs of a 20-something supermodel because this time around, there are many more wearable ways to take on the trend," the magazine continued, not reassuringly.
I'm despairing though. This low-rider resurgence is like a sensitive geo-political situation where all cracks need to be contained and covered up, quickly.
