“There’s no need to fear ---- underboob is here!”
I couldn’t help thinking that when I saw a recent USA Today article titled “The Underboob Trend Pops Off Beaches On To Red Carpets, Catwalks, Social Media.”
Although other commitments kept me from being in the cast, many moons ago when I was in junior high school, my class presented a musical called “The 20th Century: From Below The Ankles To Above The Knees.” As USA Today indicates, recent bosom-related developments have made that play terribly outdated.
Yes, the time-tested art of displaying female cleavage is so last century, and fashion’s dalliance with the “sideboob” movement has run its course, so we are left with the “underboob” trend of women (who at least SELF-IDENTIFY as “perky”) baring the LOWER portion of their breasts in public.
The New York Post labeled it “an impractical and undoubtedly uncomfortable new fashion trend,” but the world’s Kardashian/Jenner wannabes are hoping it will catch on.
Me? I’m a red-blooded male, but I think the trend shows a deplorable dumbing down of feminine aspirations. My entire family enjoyed the film “Hidden Figures,” about smart, dedicated women who used their minds to crunch numbers that made our space missions possible. Now Instagram showcases shoppers who brag, “I’ll display the top of my breasts...no, the sides of my breasts...no, the lower portions of my breasts...no, my entire breasts through a gauzy filter. Ooooo, the permutations are endless! No, wait, that’s about it.”
Amy Odell, editor of Cosmopolitan.com, defends underboob mania by declaring, “Women today want to look and feel sexy all the time, no matter what they’re wearing.”
Ladies, if Odell didn’t get around to polling YOU before making her blanket statement, perhaps you were just busy scrubbing the toilet bowl and whimpering, “My hair isn’t blowing in slow motion. I’m hideous! Hideous! What if George Clooney drops in?”
USA Today said much of the momentum for the underboob look has come from music festivals. Whatever happened to the old rule “What happens at music festivals, stays at music festivals”?
If we’re going to mainstream THIS aspect of the festivals, what’s next? (“I think we can solve the defective airbags with a rousing LGBTQ anthem and a self-indulgent 15-minute guitar solo.”)
We are told that festival attendees are always looking for “edgy new ways to express their sense of style.” But the underboob look is really sort of retro. Think about it. Companies have learned to use algorithms and internet “cookies” to tightly focus their advertising. But the underboob look is unleashed on an unfiltered mass audience.
Not only is the glimpse of skin seen by jealous rivals and prospective suitors, but it’s also exposed to dirty old men, modesty-honoring moms and innocent five-year-olds. (“YOU stare at me, too, goldfish! Darn, every three seconds I forget whether I want to be seen as a sex object or a dignified human being.”)
Regardless of how long the underboob trend lasts, it’s really sad when self-important celebrities wear outlandish fashions to awards shows while lecturing the rest of us.
Someday we’ll hear this from the United Nations: “Thanks to the judicious use of stiletto heels, slit skirts and underboobs, we have now conquered world hunger, eradicated the Zika virus and achieved Mideast peace. But three of the delegations forgot and wore PANTIES, so a solution to climate change still eludes us...”

Danny welcomes email responses at tyreetyrades@aol.com and visits to his Facebook fan page “Tyree’s Tyrades.”