Begging for trouble......

One of the joys, and challenges, of having daughters is trying to find them apparel that actually fits.  All too often, it seems that fashion designers ignore the fact that real women have something called "hips", and that real girls tend to "grow."

Why so?  Well, consider low and mid rise jeans.  Yes, some young men and fashion designers (we'll call them "not the marryin' kind") like to see young ladies in them, but given that the waist is a great place to hang clothes, what happens when one tries to hang a skirt or pants well below the waist?

OK, physics here--the tension needed to hold up a pair of jeans will go as the cosecant of the angle around the waistband.  Translated, that means that the lower one goes on the hips--as they curve around towards the legs--the more tension you need to hold up those pants or skirt.  This is why you see so much "muffin top" on ladies wearing low and mid rise jeans--less curves on the hips than at the waist means more tension, and softer tissues simply fold over the top of the pant.
Now consider what happens when one is buying apparel for a young lady (say my oldest daughter) whose hips can reasonably be expected to grow; either one begs for trouble by buying jeans that may fall off, or one begs for trouble by buying pants so tight they will be uncomfortable for the wearer.  Yes, you can help that a little with Spandex, but let's be serious here; Hooke's Law and basic mechanics still hold; you need a certain tension to hold those pants up.

Worse yet, in the store my family was shopping at last night, there were no women's belts available.  What could possibly go wrong for someone wearing ill-fitting jeans without a belt?