There are obvious health and social risks associated with skinny jeans. The chance of injuring delicate body parts as you zip up, even though you hold your breath and suck in till you turn purple. The inconvenience and potential embarrassment of struggling to peel the jeans down, millimeter by millimeter, in the confines of a public restroom stall while nature is calling with increasing urgency. The risk of losing essential objects like your wallet, keys, or cell phone because you can’t put them into your skintight pockets. And, of course, the ever-present fear that if you bend over you might hear a ripping sound and feel a sudden breeze.
Not to mention the risk—especially significant for those who live alone—of getting stuck in your jeans while you’re getting dressed. If you don’t bend your foot precisely the right way while you’re trying to slide it through that teeny little opening at the bottom of the jeans, your heel gets caught and there you are, like Cinderella’s stepsister trying to squeeze into that little glass slipper. You can’t push your foot on through, and with the jeans halfway up your thighs you can’t exactly bend over to tug the jeans back down off your foot, and you’re torn between desperately hoping someone will come in and rescue you and desperately hoping no one sees you till you manage to extricate yourself.
But it turns out there is an even greater danger than any of these: nerve and muscle damage that can land you in the hospital. Seriously. A woman in Australia, helping someone move, spent a great deal of time squatting while she emptied cupboards. Her skinny jeans compressed nerves and blocked circulation in her lower legs. By the end of the day when she walked home, her feet were so numb she fell down and couldn’t get up until someone found her. Her jeans had to be cut off in the emergency room and she spent four days in the hospital.
The moral to the story, according to doctors who published a report in the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry, is not to squat in your skinny jeans.
There actually could be an upside to this, I suppose. For example:
Friend to friend: “You know how much I admire your collection of salt and pepper shakers, but I just can’t pack them for you. The doctor says it would be dangerous to spend that much time reaching into the bottom cupboards.”
Teenage girl to parent: “Weed the garden? But you can’t make me do that—I could be crippled for life!
Mom or grandma to toddler: “Sorry, sweetheart, I’d love to get down on the floor and play eleventeen games of Candyland with you, but it wouldn’t be safe.”
Of course, there is one simple and sensible way to avoid all of these potential problems: choose jeans that aren’t quite so skinny, or at least ones that stretch. But of course, we’re not talking about sense here; we’re talking about style.
I would, however, offer just one small piece of advice: if you must squat in your skinny jeans, at least don’t do it with your spurs on.
Practical Prairie Woman 