The New Style ? ~BichonFriseOwner~

"Plumber's butt."

You know, that blindingly pale patch of derriere that peeks out from between a shirt that rides up and pants that slide down. Most commonly seen when a beefy plumber or other worker reaches or squats while on the job. Most common until recently, that is.

The effect is no longer just a boy's club, as women are baring their posteriors - sometimes intentionally, sometimes not - in the name of fashion. Low-rise jeans have booty poppin' out all over the place. Everyone is getting cheeky. Call it the new cleavage.

At Park Place, Lina Gibson, 17, and Holly Marmolejos, 20, are strutting their stuff in their low-rise jeans, so low that if they bend over...

"I just hang on to the back and pull up right here if I don't want anyone to see," said Gibson, demonstrating a way NOT to show cheek cleavage.

Marmolejos said it's a great way to get guys at the clubs to notice you. "It's to tease the guys," said Marmolejos, who works with Gibson at an assisted-living facility. "You know ... you dance, you bend over, you've got your thong on ..."

And it's not just at the malls and clubs.

Ashley Eknes and Crystal Stover, both Sahuarita sophomores this fall, also love their low-rise jeans. Both sport belly-button rings and several inches between the pierce and the top of their denims. They've both seen fellow students showing cracks and some wearing thongs up on their waists.

"I wouldn't go that far," Eknes said, about her own limits. "It makes girls look too easy," echoed Stover.

This new cleavage is not only in Tucson, but exposing itself all over the country.

For example, at Bee Clean Car Wash in Mason, Ohio, Annamarie Minturn and Cassie Thierauf, both 19, are baring their butts (albeit unintentionally) every time they lean over a car, bend down to vacuum or wipe down a tire. Thierauf's rhinestone-studded thong is there for all to see. She doesn't mean to, but when your pants hug your hips, it's bound to happen.

"It's not that I have them low so my thong can hang out," explains Thierauf. "It's a product of the pant."

It's virtually impossible to find jeans to cover your hip bones these days, and finding them to cover your cheeks continues to get harder. When Sisqo rapped, "Let me see that thooooong," he probably didn't have to look very hard. For many women, low-rise, hip-baring jeans are causing all kinds of VPL (visible panty lines). Some jeans are so low there isn't enough room for a zipper, as is the case with Levi's Too Superlows, which feature two snap buttons instead. Many other brands, such as those found at Guess, come with a specially made, shorter zipper.

Technically speaking, the "rise" of jeans is the distance between the crotch and waist. The average rise is about 10 inches. But on low-rise pants, it can be as little as six inches, depending on the brand.

Recent college graduate Marianne Pusz, 23, loves low-rise jeans. She won't wear anything else and says they are a "godsend to women with big butts."

"They show off your waist," Pusz says. "But if you don't have a butt, it's not going to make you look better by having your butt hang out. Older women wear the waist-high jeans, and it doesn't matter if you're the skinniest woman on the planet, they are going to make it look like you have a butt the size of Texas."

A dogged advocate of keeping cracks and thongs out of public view, Pusz buys Victoria's Secret low-cut bikini briefs. She tried going "commando" (sans underwear), but says it was "excruciating." The low-rise jeans phenomenon has led to a low-rise panty phenomenon.

Pusz is unbreakable in her resolve against panty showing, and she quickly decides only Britney Spears and Gwen Stefani can get away with it. "Don't give me that, 'Oops, I did it again; my thong is hanging out,' " says Pusz. "Unless you are Britney Spears, forget about it. If you are wearing low-rise jeans and regular underwear, you should be carted away. Panty lines plus showing your underwear is the cardinal sin of low-rise jeans."

Big shocker that Ryan Nesbitt doesn't mind, though. An 18-year-old, he has nothing against a half-inch to an inch of butt cleavage on a "Tara Reid-type" woman. "Bootylicious," he says.

And J.J. Yanez, a 17-year-old Cholla High senior is just fine with it, too. "It's sooo good. I like it when their butts are formed," said Yanez, out for a mall stroll with Joseph Orozco, 16, and J.R. Andrade, 24.

All this butt cleavage has school administrators and some parents reeling. Not everyone wants to see the gluteus maximus in school, not even in anatomy class. For schools, the styles pose the expected dress code issues. "We only saw a bit of it last year, nothing major," said Angela Julien, Rincon High's principal. "I suspect we'll be seeing more of it. This is already covered in the dress code, but it's one thing to address the issue - we want our young ladies to know why it's not right. We want them to have self-respect." Or be covered up in one of the school's "big, ugly T-shirts," if caught, she added. School policy dictates that if a girl shows up to school dressed inappropriately, she will be made to cover up.

Why is the young female clothing revealing so much?

"People are playing the 'how else can I entertain myself and my friends?' and there's also the shock of it, the attention," said Georgeanne Fimbres, instructor in fashion design and clothing at Pima Community College. "And we have people on the screen and stage being our closest image. Unfortunately, this is going to 12- and 10-year-olds. It's often mistaken for glamour." Still, fashion comes and goes, so, boys, enjoy it now, as this butt-baring might be outdated by fall. Just in case, Julien jokingly wants to pin her dress code on back-to-school fall fashions.

Hey, don't fret, though. When it's gone, there's still plumber's butt, unless Joe Schlueter has anything to do with it.

The owner of Schlueter Plumbing Inc. in Cincinnati has been in the business for over 35 years. He has worked hard to shed the plumber's "showy" stigma. His plumbers wear uniforms.

"I can't guarantee you won't see a little butt crack," Schlueter says. "Plumbing does involve bending over a lot ... But we are conscious of it, and we want to put someone in your home that you feel comfortable with."

-My thoughts ? Yuck!

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