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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   2857 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for October 26, 2025

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When are women going to realize how bad the baggy jeans trend looks (especially as part of a whole loose baggy style)?

Women walk around now looking like they’re in pajamas.

This seems like a lagging element of the anti-beauty aesthetics of woke, and I’m confused how wide spread anti-feminine dress has become

I know that women around don't owe me to look good (or anything at all) for my benefit, so if they want to wear ugly but comfy clothes, I have no right to complain. But selfishly, of course, I wish more beauty around me, because it makes me feel better. Hopefully, the wheel will turn again towards more aesthetically pleasing trends.

Generally baggy, or are you talking about the new "barrel cut" trend, which can range from just looking baggy to making the wearer's legs look like those of Yosemite Sam? Because apparently that's the new hotness, and it's at the point where even Target has barrel-cut jeans on display.

I hate any women's fashion that involves uglifying themselves to see who can remain attractive in spite of the uglification.

Like that whole gray hair trend. Sure, Scarlett Johansson still looked good, but there were a lot of average women that just destroyed their attractiveness by following the trend.

Baggy jeans can look good, but you need to combine them with a midriff-baring top. And a midriff that is worth baring, of course.

This is what I’ve seen from the Zoomers lately. K-pop Demon Hunters captures the desired affect perfectly.

Millennial women are sometimes still wearing skinny jeans but in a dated way, sometimes carpenter pants, but do seem to be struggling with developing a mature style. I’ve been wearing sleeveless grey or navy dresses over button up blouses this fall, and it’s fine, but not very fun.

I knew you or GeorgeEHale would have the correct opinion in this thread.

There's currently a look in Japan where 20 something girls/young women wear white sneakers and regular baggy gray sweatpants, but skintight white short sleeve shirts. And baseball caps, currently NY Yankees caps are trending. There's also a baggy pants thing but the pant legs have horizontal slits in each thigh, like a cellophane window in food packaging that reveals the contents.

You mean like this?

/images/1761536770866829.webp

Considerably higher up on the thigh.

Sure, a flowing can be nice when it draws attention to another part or the whole of the aesthetic. But the current incarnation is not Princess Jasmine. It's paired with over-sized baggy sweatshirts, and a general amorphous pajama vibe. I think the whole current vibe is very anti-aesthetics.

There was a controversial post of mine in another Friday Fun thread where I noticed that junior Zoomerettes are different from the sexless senior ones and dress more like it's 2005. If you're not afraid of dirty looks, you can look at girls instead of women.

This is just a natural part of fashion cycling. Form fitting jeans will eventually return to being in vogue. I would say that a major catalyst for the baggy jeans resurgence was Billie Eilish, but a lot of it is also just the nostalgia factor for people who grew up when skate culture was big.

Yes, it's part of a cycle, but the specifics and timing of the manifestations differ under different context. The last 'cycle' of baggy jeans was in ~2009 with the "Boyfriend cut" as a reaction to the all-in jump on skinny. But the boyfriend cut was 1. less pervasive, and 2. much less baggy and androgynous (ironically), because 3. paired with more feminime styles. Baggy jeans were rolled and paired with heels, etc.

Yeah, boyfriend cut was somewhat a revival of 1980s, current baggyness is a revival of the comically baggy JNCOs of 1990s middle schoolers.

Dont worry too much, nothing has changed about skinny-ish dark being the most flattering and most enduring.

Dunno man, I think it looks comfy. But then I'm partial to baggy cargo pants myself.

Freddie deBoer talked about this in his article "Our Product is Permission", in which he argued that modern Western society has become overly permissive along numerous axes, one of which is a greater tolerance for slovenly appearances and dressing comfortably in public spaces. Twenty years ago, seeing a woman wearing a Snuggie while stting down to dinner in a posh restaurant would have been unheard of.

I'm hesitant to attribute this trend to "wokeness".

Agreed, it's pathetic. His hypocrisy and evasiveness on the trans issue is frustrating, but I understand it's borne of a desire to stay on good terms with his sister and their child. But when I see him throwing a tantrum at someone who criticised a point he made in an article, or lashing out at one of his fellow writers (like Jesse Singal or Rob Henderson), I just can't fathom how he can be so immature and petulant. One would have thought someone who's worked as a professional writer for the better part of two decades and earns a pretty respectable income from it would have developed a thicker skin at some point along the way.

I wouldn't put 2005 on too high a pedestal. This was the period when the height of women's fashion consisted of velvet track suits with "juicy" written in rhinestones across the ass.

But I feel reasonably confident that a woman who showed up to a posh restaurant dressed in such a garment would be turned away. People dressing casually isn't Freddie's complaint: it's the relaxation of standards such that people no longer feel any expectation to dress formally in certain specific contexts.

I don't think it's fully attributable, but I do think that's part of the equation. Surely Covid is another, with everyone living in their pajamas for a few years. But I do think that there was an androgynous uglificaiton / anti-beauty trend that went mainstream around MeToo. The body positivity stuff, plus size models, etc. It's what the Syndney Sweeny ad was a reaction to / return to form against.

There were several years where media and fashion pushed hard against conventional beauty representation, and I don't think it's crazy that it worked its way into fashion generally

I find it strange, we live in a self centered era in which people care a lot about image and status. In a social media fueled age in which cosmetic surgery is doing better than ever I would have expected people to spend more effort than ever on looks.

People often talk about how we live in a politically polarised era, but politics is only one axis along which we're polarised. Instead of everyone dressing fairly presentably, a minority of people put a huge amount of effort into their appearance while the great unwashed wear grubby athleisure. Instead of most people having a normal BMI, there's a minority of slim people investing in cosmetic surgery, while the majority are overweight (if not obese). Instead of most people having a small but closely-knit social circle, there's a minority of social butterflies while the majority of people have no friends at all. Instead of most people being sexually active, there's a minority of highly sexually active people while the rest stay home gooning to their heart's content. This trend is most visible in Gen Z, but also in earlier generations.

The only thing that matters is your appearance on social media. Irl appearance no longer matters.

I’m not seeing this?

Maybe Texas is just full of skinny-jeans reactionaries?

In my area, there is a very small contingent of young women, maybe 2-3%, that are already ugly and obese and have further committed to uglifying themselves via ultra-short haircuts, facial tattoos, and multiple facial piercings.

The rest of the young women wear clothing that apparently range in style from early 2000’s midriffs and tight jeans, to tradwife dresses and skirts. Basically, 95% plus of the young women are at least attempting to wear flattering styles of clothing.

Granted, this is anecdotal, I live in a fashion backwards area, and I haven’t done a survey in the high schools. Maybe there’s an older Zoomer/younger Zoomer divide here, but I’m willing to accept a lack of epistemic certainty on that point in exchange for not having to do fashion surveys in high schools.

They seem to wear skinny jeans or, like, actual pajamas?

How wide-spread has it become? Look, maybe I’m just not as up to date on fashion, but I’m not seeing this around.

Assuming you’re correct about the trend, though, I would gently suggest that not everything can or should be tied to “woke.”

I'm surprised to hear you say you're not seeing this. This is year 3 of the trend, with it first getting popular in winter of 2025. I would call this the average level of fit on women I see these days. None of the women under 30 at my organization have every worn 'skinny' or even slim fitting jeans. I was at a pumpkin patch with my kids yesterday and about 80-90% of the women were wearing baggy wide legged pants.

Assuming you’re correct about the trend, though, I would gently suggest that not everything can or should be tied to “woke.”

Ok sure. But this specifically, I am hypothesizing is related to a general trend in media over the past years that have pretty explicitly pushed a reaction against conventional beauty standards of body shapes and fashion styles, and general downplaying of overt 'sexiness'.

It is a combination of very obvious representation decisions made in media, and my 'hot take' is that baggy fitting clothes are a lagging outcome of part of the trend. Showing skin is very 'out', and I don't think it's crazy to say that woke is part of the culture that's produced it.

The baggy wearers might look bad but they probably think they look good. Woke aesthetics was about looking bad on purpose, like the punks did, but unlike punks instead of revelling in condemnation it upped the ante by challenging and hectoring people to praise it.

Sure, the women wearing baggy jeans aren't trying to dress woke or bad on purpose. I'm suggesting that it's more downstream on the causal chain, as a product of a bunch of media and fashion trends that intentionally sidelined traditional beauty aesthetics.

Damn. You hate to see it.

If I had to come up with a theory, I’d expect something about 90s revival. Or, as @Crowstep put it, the millennials were big on skinny jeans, so the fashion barber pole has turned back towards loose ones. This fits the timeline better since there was a definite 80s revival in the last few years.

Or maybe people just put on weight during COVID.

Baggy jeans are pretty much universal among Zoomer women. They are just as ubiquitous as skinny jeans were on millennial women.

The worm will turn though, fashion will change, 'twas always thus.

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