Uncovering the Flaws in the Big Pants
Paradigm
Derek and I did some research and uncovered several flaws in the
paradigm on which big pants are currently made. Here's how most pants
manufacturers do it: they take their existing pants designs and just
scale them up. When you hit a waist size of around 60, that has
several annoying side effects:
- They don't add any more belt loops - just space out the ones that
are already there. This causes serious force-distribution problems if
one wears a belt with them - the belt pulls up through the gaps
between the loops and is mainly useless.
- Also, the scaling-up results in the belt loops being HUGE, giving
them a lot of stretch and play unless you happen to have a
four-inch-wide belt and the utter lack of fashion sensibility to wear
it.
- The fly zipper ends up being about a foot long, and the crotch
becomes proportionately deeper. This means that the zipper begins,
and ends, well above the equipment it's intended to provide
access for, presenting predictable challenges in restroom-visit
management.
- The human butt often doesn't scale the same as the human waist,
resulting in an increased susceptibility to Hooray, These Pants Events in big pants
wearers.
- The front pockets become so deep one has to crouch to get one's
hand all the way to the bottom and fish out one's keys.
- The back pockets become so deep one just can't
effectively get one's wallet out. There's no position to be assumed
that will make one's arms effectively longer when reaching into
something at that angle.
The only real advantage to the Big Pants Paradigm is the
fact that what, on regular pants, is a dinky watch pocket, becomes a
pocket big enough to keep a book in.
Derek was working on a solution for these problems... but for now,
big pants wearers will have to go on coping.
Benjamin D. Hutchins