Why Boomers Should Leave the Butt Crack Movement Behind

Most everyone has noticed by now, whether you wanted to or not, that over the past few years a certain fashion statement has begun to emerge. And when I say "emerge," I guess I mean that quite literally. For the sake of decorum, we can refer to it as the "gluteal cleft." Or, for a column such as this, we can call it what it is - the butt crack.

When I was growing up, the accidental exposure of a gluteal cleft was a rare sight indeed. People's trousers reached all the way to the waist and stayed there pretty much all day. The only exception was, yes, the occasional repairman, which Saturday Night Live parodied in one of their most famous and hilarious skits back in the 80's.

I've noticed that these days, when it comes to butt crack sightings, there's a definite divide (no pun intended) between the younger generation and us boomers. Although it may well be titillating to the younger generation, to us boomers a VBC (Visible Butt Crack) is still an occasion for sophomoric tittering and behind the scene chortling tantamount to the infamous Bill Murray and Gilda Radner shtick. My husband, for example, never fails to give me an urgent nudge and a smirk when a VBC inevitably emerges at the airport luggage carousel when a traveler bends over to pick up his or her luggage. Having been born in the 40's, this is still a forbidden, hilarious novelty for him.

However, fashion watchers like myself, and most other women, noticed a number of years ago that protruding cracks were becoming all the rage for younger women. Adorning their rumps with peek-a-boo thongs and tattoos, the crack has become the new cleavage. According to a salon.com article, "Butt cleavage is not just for the plumber anymore."

The article goes on to say that the butt cleavage movement was not necessarily an intentional move. "It hit the fashion mainstream more as a consequence of the low rise pant rather than a brainstorm on 7^th Avenue."

Armed with this awareness, I hope we can all be somewhat more forgiving of women my age who fall victim to the fashion industry's dictates and unwittingly expose what I like to refer to as butt gap. Gap for short. Butt gap is a term for more ample women, and men, whose derrieres have matured to the point where the low-rise pant waist rests on the two mounds of flab that extend up from the buttocks resulting in a chasm wide enough for a jetliner to fly down. The sad part is, most of us boomers don't even know we're gapping.

Butt gap is not sexy, and, in fact, can be dangerous. My husband once had a bumblebee fly down his gap, forcing us to pull the car over and yank his pants off on a public highway.

But, that's a whole other story.

I, too, was recently the innocent victim of an unfortunate gap incident. While sitting on bleachers at a Notre Dame football game, slightly hunched over, I unexpectedly absorbed a cold beverage down the back of my gap that I didn't even know I had. A pair of low-cut Capri's and a too-short sweater conspired to expose an abyss in the back of my pants large enough to accommodate an entire 36 oz. coke. With ice.

Sure, I'll continue to follow fashion as much as the next person. But, I, for one, will never again underestimate the beauty, and safety, of an elastic waistband.