It’s less of a Badness and more of a Suboptimality, but I think it’s still worth calling out: belts are inferior to braces.

Call me sentimental, but I miss the good old times of braces being in fashion (you must forgive me the Britishism but calling them “suspenders” would just be too weird; some say that the difference is not one of dialect but one of how they are attached to the trousers). I decided to turn my feeling into something more manifestable so I’ve recently sewn on six buttons into my pants as one of the weekend projects and started wearing braces occasionally. I really enjoyed the experience they offered; it seemed to me that they improve much on the experience that belts have to offer, for several reasons.

• The majority of belts come in discrete steps; good belts are mostly of that variety. This is a problem because if you wear such belts you might often find your pants either a little too loose, or too tight. Moreover (but maybe this is just me) belts always seem to have too few holes. In my experience, DIY piercing of belts has always led to disastrous results.
• Belts increase the (often already sizeable) girth of a person (usually male) wearing them
• Belts take some work to take off!

In short, if you’re thin, belts don’t work; if you’re fat, they look embarrassing; if you’re not on a quantum of girth (usually there’s a one-inch space between the holes), they are uncomfortable; and if you’re in a hurry, you’re out of luck (in my case they often double the amount of time it takes me to take the pants off — I timed myself!).

I found braces to not suffer from any of the above problems. They also cause tension only when it’s necessary — i.e. when you’re standing up and you need your pants to be kept up. When you sit down, the tension is gone which is much more comfortable than the constant tension that characterizes belts.

Apparently fashion is not always aligned with comfort… but there again, fashion is cyclical too so I would not be surprised if braces became popular again. And when they do, I’ll be ready.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 29th, 2009 at 20:12 and is filed under The Daily Badness. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.