The world is tiny... and getting smaller by the minute. I go by the fact that Zara “death pants” are now a thing. The hitherto innocuous (and frankly basic) item is trending with an appellation deserving of a far more radical threat to life and limb. From Bolivia to Canada and everywhere in between, a pair of pants has gone viral for its wide-legged side effect of tripping up the unsuspecting wearers of this voluminous trouser. For those sporting the capacious pants, a walk up the gravel garden path could result in a broken wrist, grazed knees, cracked phone screens, bleeding foreheads, and — the horror — an inadvertent flash of bum as the pants are pulled down by the escalator they got caught in. All of this global chaos and mayhem — in the name of a breezy, insouciant take on fashion — is now trending on a social network near you.
I know about it because of the algorithm and the UK’s Guardian newspaper. Yes, this august publication dedicated column inches to this internationally consistent set of incidents. The retailer was approached and refused to take the bait: no questions were answered. News of the deadly pants plague has spread far and wide and is now an international, cross-border issue.
My conclusion? Other than the fact that globalisation is real (if the pandemic didn’t convince you of that, then this death pants saga should), is that this story could be a function of general all-purpose anomie and disillusion with the state of play. For years, people were highly enthused by causes and exercised by all sorts of things on the interwebs. Campaigns abounded and collective fights for retributive justice were a dime a dozen. Everyone was righteous, highly offended and constantly triggered by everyone and everything else. The levels of outrage and capacity for taking offence were at an all-time high. But I think all that fervour and short-fused cancellation energy has fizzled out. I suppose there’s only so long you can operate at that pitch before you burn out and have to take to your bed for a week.
I read the death pants furore as proof positive: either that there’s really nothing to report out there or that people are plain bored by the real news, which, let’s face it, could be the case. I mean, what more can you say about all the actual chaos and mayhem unfolding all over the place without resorting to the well-trodden clickbait of the last few years? And where has it all gotten us anyway?
Better then, to settle on a pair of malicious pants. Sometimes too many really big things can cancel out all sense of personal agency and meaning. Did anything actually change with all those angry hashtags and well-meaning challenges (ice buckets aside)?
Eventually even the most ardent of social justice warriors have to give it a break and turn their focus to the minutiae they can actually control — the death pants. Because everyone across the planet presently sinking under the weight of billions of discarded cheap-as-chips pants just like these can relate. After all, this is a universal issue; the exact same pair was sold in thousands of identical shops the world over to identically dressed people making the exact same observation as they all fall on their faces... all at once.
My Uber driver was expressing the same idea just the other day. We saw two protesters at a robot waving a flag in support of some distant war-torn country and it set him off on a bout of free-form, all-purpose musing. ”I can’t really hope to change the world,“ he sighed. “I blame Donald Trump for everything, so I just accept that in this life I’m powerless. And so is Cyril.“
It was a bit bleak, to be honest, for a really short morning ride. I started scrolling on my phone to drown out his existential crisis. But the man had a point. If the bigger picture feels impossibly vast and you feel disproportionately small, what is one to do? You will focus, in his case, on the timing between rides so you can take your car for a wash and have the joy of wearing a nice airy sandal when driving all day, because focusing on the petrol price and a war on the other side of the world will do your head in.
What is there to be done in the face of a general state of despair? Gather your energies and hop onto the Zara death pants trend, that’s what. Everyone can understand the inherently dangerous nature of a pair of pants. And what’s more, everyone can do something about it.
Take them off.
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