A Bumper Crop of Booty Shorts

Chuckle #458 | June 29th, 2011
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You hear about nutty cat hoarding ladies and think “how crazy is that?!” But take a hard look at your own “collections”. Just because you hoard Tupperware or scented candles instead of cats and dirty underwear doesn’t mean that you are normal. It means that you are just a teeny DNA twist away from a full blown crackpot. At least that’s what my husband tells me.

I don’t deny my own hoarding tendencies. I gleefully stockpile used party decorations (fuzzy dice anyone?), travel coffee cups, coolers and old magazines. My teenage daughters did not escape the hoarder gene. They’ve got clothes coming out their ears. Their emotional attachment to certain 5th grade crop tops and torn jeans borders on the absurd.

This inability to “let go” means that every couple years we have to get rid of half a ton of clothes.

This year’s purge was particularly productive, yielding a massive four foot diameter pile of outgrown stuff, some of it going back two or three years. The Yankee in me wouldn’t let me just pack it all up for Goodwill and be done with it. No, I had to try on every single teeny bopper thing.

As it turns out, the pile of cast offs was chock-full of Daisy Dukes, you know, the indecent short shorts that teenage girls wear so they can get sent home before the geometry midterm? Well, against my better judgment, I snatched up seven absolutely adorable and completely inappropriate pairs of “booty shorts” from the pile.

This year I not only hoed-out my daughters’ closets, but I managed to add a little “ho” to my own.

Trust me when I say that I would never buy anything that titillating, but these were free and therefore irresistible. Daisy Dukes are cool according to Katie Perry. And “coolness” is decidedly lacking in my current wardrobe of mom jeans, t-shirts, and orthopedic flip flop inserts.

I think the adrenalin rush of wearing my new shorts will help delay the onset of menopause. And unlike hormone replacement therapy, the only negative side effect is a bit of uncomfortable thigh chafing.

Given the severity of the middle school dress code, I can’t quite figure out why my daughters owned so many pairs of short shorts in the first place. The school rules clearly state that shorts must come to the tips of your fingers when your arms are held at your sides. The shorts I’ve seen prancing into school are way cheekier than that. Either the girls at school have severely stunted arms, or no one is playing by the rules.

So who exactly is monitoring the length of shorts at school? It creeps me out to think that the principal is trolling the hallways with a ruler in hand and a gleam in his eye. I’d like to believe that the school nurse is somehow involved with assessing female inseams and crotches. And that’s only slightly less creepy.

The shorts I inherited from my daughters are fairly tame since I still pay for most of their clothes in order to have some say about whether they leave the house looking like Jodie Foster in Taxi Driver. Which I do, barely.

I don’t mind if my daughters wear “short-ish” shorts. I’m not a prude. My bottom line is that their shorts should not resemble a thong in any way; they should not expose even a peek of cheek; they should not look painted on; and most of all, they should not make dad faint.

Capris are nice. How come girls don’t wear those anymore? And what about pedal pushers or clam diggers? Gidget looked absolutely adorable in pedal pushers, but un-cool 50s moms thought that they would lead directly to unwanted pregnancies. (As, I assure you, will booty shorts.)

So how do I teach my daughters that (exposing) LESS (flesh) IS MORE? That emulating an Amish Geisha can be far more tantalizing than a Lady Gaga? Somehow my long speeches about self-respect and circumspection seem hypocritical when I’m looking so very fine in their hand-me-down Daisy Dukes…
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