The Advantages of Tight Pants

A friend of mine showed up the other day wearing tight pants. Not spandex-tight, but definitely tight jeans. Black. This isn't his usual style – he's been stuck in the baggy pants limp bizkit late 90's sk8er rut as long as I have. Now he was bowing to the new fashion gods. The ones that wear tight pants.

I asked him where he'd got them.

"Demo Streetwear are having a liquidation sale," he said. He'd gotten the pants – worth around $125 at the usual RRP – for thirty-five bucks.

Well, this was good, so I arranged to meet him at the shop the next day.

I ended up getting a new pair of Lee jeans (whoa! Labelled! Go sweatshops!) for $35. They were worth $160, so I think it was a good buy. Only thing is, of course, with the kids these days wearing what they do, they were a bit… tight.

I decided to wear them for a bit before deciding whether to put them on TradeMe.

Well, two days on and I'm still wearing them. (Not two days straight, but you get the idea.) They're good. And they kind of make my old ones – all of my old, baggy pants – look sorta stupid.

Oh man, I knew this would happen one day. I'm slowly turning metrosexual. Hmm, there's a word you don't see that much anymore. That's because I'm five years late to the trend, of course.

But there are some good reasons for wearing tight pants. I've been coming up with a mental list for the last couple of days. Here are some of them.

• They keep everything in its right place, like the Radiohead song.
• When you're biking (I bike everywhere, except when I take the bus) the chain can't eat your pants leg. Unlike my other pants, which I have to tuck into my sock, like a crazy old man.
• You look a bit more emo. Or fashionable or whatever. Which leads to emo girls looking at you (maybe) and emo girls are hot.
• You feel like a rock star – possibly because you can sing a bit higher than before.
• Your friends age 16-22 think you're one of those old guys who still "have it."

Well, that's all I can do for the advantages. There are plenty of drawbacks.

• Your friends age 16-22 think you're one of those old guys who still "have it." I hate those guys.
• Your old mates think you're a pillock, and will continue to until they get with the programme
• It's hot and there's no ventilation
• All of a sudden, all of your shitty old shoes are obsolete, because with tight pants they look like clown shoes. Ditto pretty much everything else in wardrobe.
• Your sperm die. You can just tell.

I think I've come to realise having even a microscopic amount of fashion-consciousness is a slippery slope. A slippery, expensive slope, studded with infected razor blades. Still, time and fashion will roll on, everyone's baggy jeans will wear out, and by 2010 everyone will be wearing tight pants, whether they like it or not.

Cool. It'll be like the 70's, only with global warming and deader Beatles.