BUMS AWAY!
Confidence is great and all, but you don’t have to flaunt it if you’ve got it. Celebs, a plea: Conceal your caboose
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HERE was a time — before Instagram and the Kardashians — when what happened between you and your butt was a backroom deal.
But nowadays, it’s all about transparency. Bare butts have proliferated in public in a way that would make “Thong Song” rapper Sisqó blush.
Last week, Lizzo took in the Lakers game at the Staples Center in a black dress with a giant hole on the backside, revealing a thong.
At one point, the 31-year-old singer stood up and twerked bare-bottomed for the crowd, which included kids and, hopefully, a few nuns from the local Sisters of Mercy chapter praying for modesty.
Her risqué dancing hit the Jumbotron and then the Internet, inciting a pileup of both criticism and praise for her look. Some on Twitter insinuated that anyone grossed out by the outfit and the lady wearing it were fat-shaming. The backlash reflected a “hatred of fat black women,” according to a Teen Vogue headline.
The bodacious star told “CBS This Morning” that she doesn’t pay attention to haters and insisted, “I had on layers down there. It wasn’t just flesh-to-seat — contrary to popular belief.”
She added in an Instagram Story, “If you really don’t like my ass, you can kiss it. ’Cause kissing it makes it go away, I promise.”
For hygienic reasons, I must decline the invitation. But Lizzo isn’t the only star putting her derrière on display; she’s merely the boldest.
It’s been a slippery slope since the release of Kim Kardashian’s 2014 Paper magazine cover, on which her rear looks like a greased-up Norman Rockwell turkey. The photo “broke the Internet” — along with our sense of style and decency.
Now, teenage girls, anyone who once dated Tyga, and high-fashion models have all hitched their wagons to the come-hither butt pose. “Belfies” by women of every shape, size and color, abound on social media and even the red carpet.
And then there is model Bella Hadid, who, during a recent trip to St. Barts, seemed to have commissioned her thong to lead an archaeological excavation of her crevice.
It looks terrible and terribly uncomfortable. Exposing the tender bits of your bum, which, unlike cleavage, has an unsavory function — doesn’t scream empowerment. It screams, “Hug me . . . preferably with a blanket.”
Call me a scold, but I come from a simpler time when if you split your trousers, you went home to change. You didn’t happily leave the house with rear-revealing pants.
And even the architect of this mess, Kim K, has declared, “Good night, moon.”
She recently vowed to be more “modest,” while husband Kanye West declared her sheer Met Gala dress “too sexy.”
Here’s my rallying call for this new decade: Let’s put the ass back in class and cover up your culo.