So today, for the first time, I heard the term “muffin top”. I am turning into an old man, I guess. From Urban Dictionary:
muffin top 1013 up, 179 down
Muffin-Top is a word used to describe the strange and bizarre waist scrunching effect that results when females wear tight fitting, low-rise/hip-hugger pants along with small-sized, navel exposing, mid-riff tops.
Though, the effect is more extreme with heavier females, all females, with the exception of anorexic models, can fall victim to the muffin-top disaster. The reason for this, is that the design of low-rise/hip-hugger pants, originally popular during the late 60’s and early-to-mid 70’s, defies the natural shape and contours of the average females’ body; forcing the skin and fat around her waist, back and upper buttocks to spill out over her pants and through her tiny crop-top, causing a muffin-top effect.
Originally, the idea behind low-rise pants and mid-riff tops, which made their first reappearance during the mid-to-late 90’s, was to produce clothing that would make a woman’s torso appear longer, and possibly thinner, than it actually was. Normally, men’s pants are designed with lower waists, because of their naturally longer torsos, narrower hips and smaller pelvises. In order to recreate this “longer, thinner torso” appearance for women, clothing manufacturers adopted shorter-waist, men’s trousers, modified the design for the female market, resulting in the catastrophe that the word, “muffin-top” currently describes. The muffin-top’s legacy, if anything, describes the disaster that can result when the fashion industry goes terribly wrong. The existence of muffin-tops is currently quite common, which is a testament to the fact that women will buy and wear anything, regardless of how vulgar and ridiculous it looks, as long as it is popular.
Wow, look at that muffin top! tags whale-tail low-rise low-rider hip-hugger chucha by Mr. Cheesy Cheeseville Jul 15, 2006 email it
This term was used to describe a late-night guard at our disaster-recovery site. I instantly recognized what he was describing when my co-worker said of the guard, “She likes to wear really skanky clothes with lots of leather, and it kind of grossed me out because she had a big muffin top below her halter.”
Never heard the slang term before, knew what it meant the moment I heard it. Now that is a useful phrase!