
Today we will look at one of my least favorite fashion occurrences. This has been going on for far too long, and I have lost the self-control to tolerate it. As with all moronic fashion trends, for months I patiently photographed the idiocy and awaited its disappearance. The problem we face today is that the Sausage Mc Muffins simply are not going away.
So I must ask you Los Angeles: how can we eliminate the social pressure to compress the entirety of one's belly fat into a sausage-like ring around one's waist? What sort of protest must we organize to free the spare tires and allow them to disperse in their appropriate locations (i.e. inside the pants)? Which government office should we alert to the rising of the muffin tops over the waistline?
In general, this is not an attractive look, and it can objectively be labeled pretty gross and bordering on repulsive. It also appears to be rather constricting and uncomfortable and in some cases even painful. So WHY?


This is not about being overweight or having a BMI over 30 or society's pressures to be thin or eating disorders. This is about what the hell were you thinking when you left the house in that outfit with your gut hanging over your belt like that and why did you think that was okay? The belt buckle is likely to be imprinted on the underside of the panus for two days and it can't feel good. Can it?
Oh and please don't go on with the "they can't help it, that's how clothes are designed these days, wah wah wah I'm a helpless victim to the fashion industry!" Explain this one then, low rise sympathizers. This was clearly a DIY Muffin Top Making for Dummies Volume 1. I almost asked this woman what compelled her to create such an atrocity, but I thought better of it and photographed her and posted her image all over the internet instead. So I was raised in a passive-aggressive household. I'm dealing with that issue in therapy. Moving on.

Here is a fine example of someone sacrificing comfort for alleged fashion. At what point does following a trend overcome the desire to have blood flow to the lower extremities? I hope I never see the day when I wake up and say "sorry, feet. I know you used to enjoy having constant nourishment but I really just want to show off my belly today so can you just hold your breath until I get home? Thanks."
To make things even worse, people have taken to decorating and adorning their sausage guts with tattoos and piercings. Navel piercings find themselves suffocating and gasping for breath from within the dark confines of belly roll. Tattoos find themselves manipulated and distorted by shear forces stretching from within. These phenomena make it painfully obvious that the belly is begging for attention, and when it can't get it through simple exposure, it has to start adding items of flair. Well here you go, Muffin. Here's your 15 minutes.
You may think I'm being a sexist bitch and I expect women to be perfect supermodels and any deviation from the harsh standards imposed upon us by the media is a disgrace to femininity. Wrong! This look is just as stupid and nasty on men and should be avoided at all costs regardless of sex, gender or orientation. Sure, some men use euphemisms like "love handles" or "spare tire," but the reality is that this kind of love can stay inside the home, and if someone were stuck on the side of the road by a non-existent call box he'd still be completely useless as this spare isn't inflatable. It's not a handle and it's not a tire. It's your flab, and it doesn't need sunlight and oxygen to grow. It's doing just fine on its own.

Didn't think it could get worse? Ha! Just pull the panties out the top to emphasize the virtual explosion coming from down below. Skin! Guts! Cotton panties! This horrible look was seen in girls as young as 13 walking to the middle school in the morning. I'm considering starting a school uniform bill in my neighborhood so I don't have to look at it. If I'm staring this much, imagine what the pre-pubescent boys are doing in class. No wonder CA has such a poor literacy rate. My guess is they can spell "Victoria's Secret" just fine.

Usually I see a fellow Dodger fan and I feel a sense of camaraderie and bonding. In this particular instance, I feel only betrayal. A girl who loves baseball should be a girl with self-respect, not some sort of belly-baring groupie who jiggles around the stadium. No more all-you-can-eat-pigvilion for you, young lady, until you put on something more appropriate.
Is it some sort of badge of courage and honor to wear pants 2 sizes smaller than your friends? Just lie about it. Your BFF wears an 8? Well say you wear a 4 then. Good for you! Women have the luxury of not having their waist size printed on the outside of their pants the way most men do. Do your friends going to bend you over and check your jeans label to see if that's really a size 4? No. And do you know why? Because it would take them 20 minutes to find the button on those things underneath all of the skin that has been lifted up and out of the pants. They don't have a chance. This is a good opportunity to utilize your ABC After-School-Special peer pressure resistance techniques and say, "I don't care what you think, Sally. I could wear a size 16 and I'd still love myself!" or some shit like that.

Jeans are not push-up bras and belly cleavage isn't hawt. I've had a ton of self-righteous not-so-bright people say to me, "I admire her because she doesn't care how she looks!" You've got it all wrong, jackasses. She does care how she looks, that's why she's risking permanent rug burns to her nether-regions by wearing pants that are 2 sizes too tight. That's why she is tolerating a belt buckle grinding into her gut every time she sits down. That's why her feet are turning blue and cyanotic from a lack of oxygen below the waist. Because she's trying so hard that it hurts.
Maybe it's time we accept our bodies and dress appropriately. Maybe it's time we start looking in the mirror or trying to sit down before we go out. Or maybe it's just a good time for liposuction. Who knows.
All photos by Malingering, who would rather go naked than endure wearing jeans that tight.




Malingering, I am VERY happy to see you posting for LAist! Your flickr sets are fantastic.
this is hilarious. i try to be conscious of my less attractive assets, i hope to god i don't ever catch one of my body parts in a post of yours!
I'm so happy that Tony has given Malingering a wider audience. These important issues need to be addressed pronto!
I AM NOT BEING SARCASTIC!
Welcome to LAist Malingering!
Here's a query - are there muffin-top fetishists out there? Is this era of women's fashion their golden age?
Thank god someone is trying to stop this insanity.
I assume that girls dress this way to attract guys, but I find it really hard to believe any guy would find these guts, love handles and spare tires attractive.
Look, I know not everyone is a size 0, 2, or 4 but when did showing your worst physical attributes become some sort of feminist fashion statement to thumb you nose at the emphasis on extreme thinness?
I'm all for rejecting Hollywood's emphasis on thin, but come on, no one wants to see your gut if you're male, or female no matter what age you are.
There are ways to dress for Southern Cal weather that will keep you cool, and classy at the same time.
I work with a guy who can't get enough of the muffin top, so yes, there are muffin-top fetishist out there (well, at least one in Burbank).
fantastic as usual
Mal, I love you.
You should totally hang out at the UCLA or USC campus one day and look for fashion victims. I bet that would be a priceless photo op.
Amen!
The thing that is amazing about this trend is that it makes thin people look frumpy, too (as illustrated in the last picture.) Why do you want to emphasize the fat you (in some cases -- barely) have. Just buy the pants that are a size larger and get over it, or, alternatively, buy the shirt that is 3inches longer to hide these horrible rolls!
OMG, LAist is turning into Vice Mag's dos and don'ts !
I have to admit, sometimes muffin tops can be pretty hot. I'll agree with you that from a pure aesthetic stance it makes no sense. But there are more than a few men who like girls with love handles, and hey, this just shows the handles.
Always good to hear a voice of reason online. :) And to answer someone's question earlier -- judging by the number of favorable comments to the second photo (pink flubber) as seen in Mal's Flickr stream, the fetishists are out there and can be rather militant about liking obese wimminz who let it alllll hang out.
I know some people who think they are fat simply because wearing tight low-rise and short shirts make their guts buckle. No! You aren't fat, you've overstuffed your clothes. However, that girl next to you with the belly that vibrates when she takes a step, no matter what she wears... that's what you should be looking out for. Funny how the okay-bodied people get self-conscious and the not-so-nifty can be blithe.
I don't dislike average or even chunky people, I want to make that clear. I do however see people wearing the stuff as seen above (either gender) and say almost aloud, "they do make that in your size, you know." Shirts DO extend below the navel, and DO come in a larger circumfrence that doesn't delineate every detail so badly that you need a second shirt (and what's up with that fashion trend?). Pants DO come up above the pelvic arches. No one is FORCING you to leave that range exposed to the elements. Be your bad self, it's okay if you've got a little meat, but for the love of Jah don't put it on display! Years ago we used to say "Spandex is a priviledge, not a right." We're beyond buttwrinkle biking shorts, only to replace it with TMI midriffs.
These fashion mistakes remind me of the immortal words of Eric Cartman: Whatever, I do what I want.
Personally, as a man with just a "little" extra up front(its all based on self perception), I prefer the low rise jeans, this enables me to move freely and comforably with out risk of muffin top (or shooting someones eye out with a button).
Do I see pegged jeans? How old are these pics?
Mal, you are awesome!
There is a cure for muffins and their just-as-hideous cousins, souffles. It's called a mirror. If only some people would use it more often before they left the house.
You are absolutely right. Fat bodies are disgusting and must be hidden from view. If you want to expose your midriff, make sure to clear it with LAist first.
Thank you for raising this important issue.
I've seen muffin tops on skinny, skinny women. It's a stupid fashion...unless it means "Fat is IN!" Then, hey, I'm all for it!
"Muffin top"?
These are GUNTS. Let's not be coy about this! The gunt is the part of the body between the gut and the cunt - hence the grammatical mashup. The nuclear bomb did many things, least of which was annihilating any sense of propriety Americans had. This is fallout as bad as any radioactive cloud.
Nothing to see here, folks. Petting zoo material. Do not waste bandwidth.
Wrong. Gunts can occur in males and females. They are only seen when looking directly at a obese person.
Muffin tops spill over all sides. Like a muffin.
#17 and 19 Get a sense of humor or maybe just lighten up a bit. Geeez.
Funny blog keep it up.
I prefer the term FUPA. "foo-pah". Fat Upper Pussy Area. Picturing the FUPA wihout the jeans covering what's below is worse than anything you see here.
Listen up you fashion-impaired fatties, keep suffocating yourselves, maybe the FUPA will magically disappear... sort of like when you tie a rubber band onto something and it falls off!
Jeans on, jeans on!
I'm with #6 - I think most of those "muffin tops" are hot.
it kinda give me a boner, then again ugly girls get me off
Not a fan of the look at all, but the way the pants are cut does make a difference. Low riders can give even skinny Brittany Spears (pre babies) a muffin top - it's just WHERE they cut you off. Makes trying to buy jeans a real pain. Enough with the low rise already. And if you buy the pants a size bigger, they fall down! Add a belt - right back to muffin top. Not a fan as I said.
I agree with the "thats how pants are cut" comment-- but didn't midriff shirts go out of style in 1995?
I think longer shirts are the answer.
I just love that I can call you MAL now. Your number one fan.