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.
