I have been wearing the same tailored trousers for a few years now and thought it was time to update my wardrobe to the latest trends.  So on a recent visit to Bengaluru my friend Zaki became my sartorial guide. He took me to a shop called TexMart behind Commercial Street. They had many international brands at reasonable prices. 

Zaki suggested we buy the latest clothing trend — skinny jeans. While I was still selecting, Zaki walked into the trial room with a pair of white jeans and stepped out grinning and declaring, “Don’t buy this fit. These pants are so tight it feels like my second skin.” I joked to him and quoted actor Robin Williams, who said, “Your pants are so tight one can tell which religion you belong to.” 

Zaki whose sense of humour is even more crass added, “Forget religion, I’m worried my thigh area may bulge if I break wind. I dare not eat peanuts if I plan to wear these pants.” The sales boy who was assisting us let us know our “aukat” as he said, “Sir you are trying on ‘super skinny’ jeans. Those are for young boys, you should try relaxed fit pants.”

In the course of this shopping adventure, we discovered that today pants have too many types of fits. There is Skinny fit, Super Skinny fit, Slim fit, Regular fit, Loose fit, Relaxed fit, Narrow fit, Straight fit, Tapered fit, Boot cut, High waist, Low-rise, Mid-rise…. and more I heard about these fits and rises, I became indecisive and my BP started to rise. Finally we ended up with regular fit pants. 

But we wish we had bought one super skinny ‘elastane jean’ because then, like how women who wear low cut tops, reprimand men with the famous line:  “My eyes are up here” as men look down to catch a glimpse, we too could sport these stretch jeans that quite clearly define the contours of one’s manhood and say, “My eyes are up here”, even if the other person was just looking down and not looking ‘down there.’  

As Zaki said, this trend of wearing stretchy, thin-fabric, skinny fit pants for men is going to create a new breed of letchers. He called them “crotch gazers.”  

While we walked out with a pair of uninteresting regular fit pants, we couldn’t help but wonder if this new trend of ‘crotch-crushing’ fashion was affecting the wearer’s health? Surely this constricting fashion had to have side-effects? We got our answer last week.

The headline read, “Long Drive, an Automatic Car & Tight Jeans Become Recipe for 30-year-old Delhi Man’s Near Death Experience.” It was reported that 30-year-old Saurabh Sharma suffered a pulmonary embolism, a blockage in one of the pulmonary arteries in the lungs, because of his non-stop eight-hour-long drive in automatic car while donning tight-                            fitting denims! 

It turns out tight clothes are indeed bad for health. Doctors have reported women wearing ultra tight jeans for long periods of time suffering from ‘meralgia paresthetica’ — a disorder that occurs when one of the nerves that runs along the outer part of a thigh gets compressed. Now this condition is also known as “Tight                                  Jean Syndrome.” 

Apart from these neural problems, the British Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology says that there is a link between tight clothing and endometriosis, a gynaecological medical condition that can cause                 infertility in women! 

Interestingly sometimes fashion is not dangerous just for women. One small study even suggested that men who wear ties too tightly could be at a greater risk of Glaucoma because they are restricting blood flow to the brain! So the metaphorical noose of a working man has literally turned into one. 

As for tight pants among men, it is said tight waist attire causes heartburn and acid reflux. So next time you buy a pant, make sure you don’t just try it standing up, but also try it sitting down, preferably in your drinking position, so you end up buying a waist size which allows you to enjoy a drinking session without the fear of a heartburn.

While modern fashion can be constricting, there is a slow demand for comfortable technology-based clothing and also “healthy” clothing. 

The electronics giant, Samsung, is making smart business suits that can unlock your phone and exchange digital business cards. The famous fashion label Tommy Hilfiger has begun embedding chips into their clothes which will tell the wearer when it’s time to wash them! There is now a children’s clothing company called b’Zt who are making machine washable children’s clothes with GPS chips embedded in them, so parents can track them on                                           their phone. 

Apart from these smart clothes, there are healthy clothes too like AmberNoon, a women’s clothing line that has built-in UV protection. There is also Monsoon Blooms that makes clothes with fabric dipped in Auyrvedic medicine. So in time, may be there will be a skinny jeans that will show off your body, but calculate the right amount of stretch so it does not become a health hazard. 

The truth is most of these studies today on tight clothes seem to be based on extreme cases. Surely, wearing anything too constricting for too long can cause damage,  be it jeans or even a pair of socks, because even its soft elastic openings can leave an itchy depression on your skin. 

Now, I am glad that in these modern times it’s not just the women who have to suffer the pains of fashion. Today men too have to splurge on fairness creams, hair removals, uncomfortable boots and clothes. 

The skinny jeans is not just a women problem even men who wear tight jeans for too long should know that it can overheat your engine room and potentially cause your engine to seize. So men looking to be fathers in their late 30s, stop trying to dress like you are in your 20s. 

But if you still want to wear tight pants, then it’s time to order a pair of ABCs. It stands for “Anti-ball crushing pants” made by the famous yoga clothing company called Lululemon. Yes, it exists. And yes, we live in strange times…

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