High waisted versus hip huggers: the great jeans debate

By SKYLA HENDRICKS

Staff Writer

High waisted jeans versus hip huggers, an age-old question. Well, maybe not age-old, but debatable enough. I am an avid hip-hugging jean wearer, but I have started to feel like I am the only one with recent trends favoring high waisted. I started to wonder which jeans were more popular on the UMW campus and why girls preferred one kind of jean over another.

Out of the 51 girls asked, 28 prefer high waisted jeans and 23 girls prefer hip huggers. As I was secretly rooting for hip huggers, I was only a little disappointed. I expected high waisted jeans to blow hip huggers out of the water, but there was some competition between the two.

Lindsey deCamp, a senior theatre major, said she “prefers high waisted jeans because I feel more comfortable and confident in them and I really like the style of them.”

Another fan of the high waisted jeans, freshman Amelia Jones, said that she “prefers high waisted because I think they’re more flattering and more comfortable when you sit down.” These responses were fairly typical. The general consensus was that high waisted jeans are more comfortable because they do not have to worry about pulling them up and that they feel more flattering and make them look slimmer.

Interestingly enough, the girls who opted for hip huggers said some of the same things as girls on the other side of the debate. The responses were about comfortability and how flattering it made them look.

Susan Belew, a sophomore psychology major, put her opinion quite simply by saying that “it just feels weird having high waisted jeans on.”

Other girls who supported hip huggers did not like the feeling of jeans above their navels. The overall motivation seemed to stem mostly from comfortability just as we saw with high waisted jeans.

Some girls I asked could not pick a side because they liked both kinds of jeans equally, or it would depend on the outfit they were wearing for the day. It could also depend on the mood they were in while choosing their daily outfit.

While the results were close, I honestly thought that high waisted jeans were going to take the poll by storm. However, no matter how out-of-style hip huggers in magazines and on TV, they only lost by five votes here at Mary Washington.

The reasonings behind each vote were not a surprise because people choose their clothing based on what makes them look and feel good. There are many different styles out there and everyone looks their best in what makes them comfortable and confident. So no matter what side of the great jean debate you land on, you look awesome in whatever you choose.