Whale tail

Whale tail is the Y-shaped waistband of a thong or g-string when visible above the waistline of low-rise jeans, shorts, or a skirt that resembles a whale's tail.[1][2][3] Intentionally or unintentionally, a whale tail is exposed above the trousers mostly when sitting or bending, or even while standing. The frequency or occasion depends on the style of trousers, the style of underwear, and the way they are worn.[4] Flashing whale tails became popular in the early 2000s, together with the rise of low-rise jeans and thong underwear. The trend, popularized by a number of female celebrities including Christina Aguilera, Victoria Beckham, Mariah Carey, Melanie Blatt, Paris Hilton, Jordan, Anna Kournikova, and Britney Spears waned within the decade.

Specially designed trousers like low-rise jeans or hip-huggers and higher cut thongs lead to greater exposure of the whale tail.[1][4][5] The trend was also associated with the trend of sporting lower back tattoos.[6] The word was selected by the American Dialect Society in January 2006 as the "most creative word" of 2005. The concepts of visible panty line, buttock cleavage, and sagging are closely related to the whale tail.

Contents

History

The increased popularity of low-rise jeans led to increased exposure of the whale tails in the early 2000s,[7] which quickly became mainstream as a Gucci model revealed one on the catwalk, Melanie Blatt of All Saints was photographed flashing her thong as she got out of a taxi, and Victoria Beckham suggested that her husband enjoyed wearing her G-strings around the home.[8] Britney Spears has been portrayed as a major contributor to the whale tail's popularity.[9][10][11] Her whale tail flashing has been referred to in such creative literature books as Married to a Rock Star by Shemane Nugent,[12] Thong on Fire by Noire,[13] The Magical Breasts of Britney Spears by Ryan G. Van Cleave,[14] and Off-Color by Janet McDonald.[15] The Oregonian, a Portland, Oregon, newspaper, wrote in 2004 that an abundance of whale tails had become a distraction on the campus.[16] Social commentator Ann C. Hall identified this campus trend as an "apparent intersection between everyday campus fashion and soft porn".[6] The layered clothing trend of the early 2000s was partly led by the whale tail style that incorporates hip-hugger jeans, crop tops and high riding thongs popularized by celebrities.[17][18]

Rise

By the mid 2000s, whale tails became common to celebrities, providing opportunities to the papparazzi.[19][20] Whale tail flashing spawned a new accessory — clip-on jewelry for the visible straps.[21] Jess Cartner-Morley of The Guardian claimed that following pop stars in the hipster trousers gave rise to the "low-slung jeans, whale-tail G-string era".[22] On 17 September 2004, a writer for the Chicago Sun-Times stated, "Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera regularly were photographed with thong straps riding high above their low-rise jeans. And even usually tasteful Halle Berry succumbed to the thong craze by attending an awards show with bejeweled thong straps peeking out from above her miniskirt."[10] Actresses Gillian Anderson, Natalie Portman, Sarah Jessica Parker, Kim Cattrall and Tara Reid, MTV's Molly Sims, model Kate Moss, singers Beyoncé Knowles, Mariah Carey, Jennifer Lopez, Janet Jackson, LeAnn Rimes and Britney Spears have been associated as propagators of the trend by American Broadcasting Company.[23]

In France, clothing brands started creating the thong or le string in styles that encourages a projection above low-hung jeans, such as designs that had little jewels or luminous stars sewn into the rear.[24] In India, thongs peeked out of low-rise jeans in page three parties and university bashes.[25] Indian model Shefali Zariwala flashed a whale tail in the MTV Immies-winning music video "Kaanta Lagaa" and shot to fame and public debate in 2003.[26][27] In Japan, clothing company Sanna's brought forward an extreme low-rise hip-hugging jeans design with built-in thong whale tails.[28] R&B artist Sisqó rhapsodized about whale tails in his "Thong Song"[11] — "I like it when the beat goes da na da na/Baby make your booty go da na da na/Girl I know you wanna show da na da na/That thong th thong thong thong." Pornographic film director Mike Metropolis made three films based on whale tails — Whale Tail (2005), Whale Tail I (2005) and Whale Tail II (2006) — with Mark Ashley in the lead.[29] Another movie titled Whale Tail: Thong Dreams was released in 2005 featuring Sunny Lane and Kirsten Price.[30] In 2003, web content developer Gavin Hamilton created the site whale-tail.com with content featuring whale tail flashing.[31] Since then the domain has commanded a fair fetching price.[32] The website has been quoted by ABC Radio, NY Times,[11] FHM (UK) and Fuel Magazine (Australia), and has been nominated as a Best Adult Web Site by Australian Adult Industry Awards in 2008.[33]

Legal debates

In 2004, Louisiana, USA State Representative Derrick Shepherd proposed a bill (HB1626), also known as the Baggy Pants Bill to Louisiana House of Representatives. The bill proposed that "it shall be unlawful for any person to appear in public wearing his pants below his waist and thereby exposing his skin or intimate clothing" and that violators would be subjected to three eight-hour days of community service and a fine of up to $175.[34] The measure died in the face of opposition from the American Civil Liberties Union.[35] The bill was proposed again in 2008 and was rejected by a state Senate panel.[35] In two Louisiana towns, Delcambre (a maximum penalty of $615 fine or up to six months in prison) and Opelousas (a maximum penalty of $500 fine or up to six months in prison), wearing low slung pants that reveal buttock cleavage or undergarments is considered a misdemeanor.[34][36][37] Garments that reveal underpants were banned in four other Louisiana towns including Alexandria and Shreveport, where violators face fines of $150 or 15 days in jail, as well as Hawkinsville, Georgia.[36][38]

In February 2005, the Senate Courts of Justice Committee of Virginia voted unanimously in a hastily convened meeting against a bill proposed by Delegate Algie T. Howell Jr. (Norfolk, Virginia) to impose a $50 fine on any person who publicly and intentionally "wears and displays his below-waist undergarments, intended to cover a person's intimate parts, in a lewd or indecent manner" in a public place.[39] The bill (HB1981), also known as the Droopy Drawers Bill, was earlier passed by Virginia House of Delegates by a 60–34 vote.[40][41] Atlanta, Georgia, Dallas, Texas, Baltimore, Maryland, Charlotte, North Carolina, Yonkers, New York, Duncan, Oklahoma, Natchitoches, Louisiana, Stratford, Connecticut, Pine Bluff, Arkansas, and Trenton and Pleasantville of New Jersey, as well as three other Georgia towns including Rome Brunswick and Plains have seen attempts to ban underwear peeking over the pants.[38] School dress codes sometimes also banned some low-rising pants or visible underwear.[42][43][44]

Decline

By the end of the decade whale tails suffered a bit of a backlash. Trinny Woodall, presenter of BBC1's What Not to Wear, described women who wore thongs showing above their trousers as "disgusting".[8] Jessica Kaminsky wrote in I Hate the Gym, a lifestyle commentary, "I hate when girls let their "whale tails" creep out of their pants."[45] In 2007, religious writer Tamie Bixler Lung wrote, "There is something wrong when Christian guys and girls want to run around with their underwear hanging out the top of their pants, or their thong strap sticking out the back of their low-rise jeans."[46] In 2008, model and reality TV star Jodie Marsh said, "Showing your thong is a bit old now."[8]

The trend of wearing whale tail-revealing jeans started to dissipate somewhat in the late 2000s when American clothing designers started shifting focus from low-slung jeans and exposed midriffs to high-waisted trousers and cardigans.[11] Jess Cartner-Morley, fashion writer of The Guardian, claimed that the whale tail and the muffin top (the bulge of flesh hanging over the top of low-rider jeans), "twin crimes of modern fashion", had led to the decline in the popularity of hipster jeans.[47] She quoted Louise Hunn, editor of the British edition of InStyle, as saying — "When a look goes too mainstream, people start wearing it badly. And then the really fashionable people run a mile".[48] While the thong still represented 24% of the US$2.5 billion annual market in women's underwear, it stopped growing by end of 2004.[11] By 2007, thongs were overtaken by boyshorts and accounted for only 12% of the knickers market.[8] Some vendors, including Victoria's Secret and DKNY, started selling thongs that do not result in whale tails.[49][50][51][52] Adam Lippes, founder of the lingerie line Adam + Eve, said, "Women got tired of it. And they got sick and tired of seeing string hanging out of the top of every celebrity's jeans."[11]

Socio-cultural analysis

See also: Social impact of thong underwear

Attributing whale tails to mainstreaming of the sexualization of young women, The Press Democrat termed the trend as "stripper chic".[53][54] Post-modern thinker Yasmin Jiwani and co-writers described the trend in Girlhood: Redefining the Limits as an attempt to redefine girlhood while acknowledging the debate around it. The book termed the trend as the "slut" look popularized by Britney Spears.[9] Some experts even dubbed whale tail flashing as "thong feminism" for young girls.[55] Other experts accused marketers of "outrageous selling of sex to children".[56]

One conjecture assumes that the style of exposed thong may have "bubbled-up" from the street level to the high streets, like the jeans and t-shirt look of James Dean.[57] Another assumes the fad was initiated by glamor model Jordan in England and singers Mariah Carey and Spears in the United States.[58] The phenomenon has been compared to the phenomenon of visible bra straps.[59][60] Saying that "just as Madonna made bras a public garment in the 1980s, Ms. Lewinsky, Paris Hilton and Britney Spears transformed women's panties into a provocative garment intended for public display", the New York Times claimed that the thong, with straps worn high over the hips and exposed by fashionable low-rise jeans and "Juicy Couture" sweat pants, had become a public icon.[11]

Word of the Year

Tail of a Whale

Tail of a whale
The tail of a whale, the inspiration behind the coinage, is also called a fluke, in whole or as one of the lobes.[61][62] Cetaceans, or whales, dolphins and porpoises, lost their feet and evolved to have the flukes when they returned to the sea in the Eocene epoch.[63][64][65][66] Studies in locomotion shows that the flukes are used to generate forward motion, while the flippers are used to take banked turns.[67][68] The tail is also used to slap the prey of the whale.[69]

"Whale tail" was selected by the American Dialect Society (a group of linguists, editors, and academics) in January 2006 as the "most creative word" of 2005, winning with 44 votes. The other nominations for the year were muffin top (25 votes), flee-ancée (a reference to runaway bride Jennifer Wilbanks, 15 votes), and pinosaur (a very old Wollemi pine tree near Australia’s Blue Mountains, 6 votes).[70] It has been reported that Wayne Glowka, member of the Georgia College and State University faculty and head of the New Word Committee of the Dialect Society, was in favor of "muffin top" for the top spot, while Grant Barrett, project editor of the Historical Dictionary of American Slang, was in favor of "whale tail", at the Society's 6 January 2006 conclave to decide the winners of the year in Albuquerque.[71]

While discussing these new coinages, Sali Tagliamonte, associate professor of linguistics at the University of Toronto, observed that young women in North America were ahead of young men as influencers.[72] The use of the word to indicate an underwear phenomenon has shown up in serious mainstream news media,[73][74] sometimes in reference to the pop stars who made the fashion trend popular.[74] Wayne Glowka, member of the Georgia College and State University faculty and head of the New Word Committee of the Dialect Society, said about the happening, "Language is just going on its merry way, creating many new words. It's time for men to win something."[75]

Though the word is not included in major formal dictionaries, web-based user-generated dictionaries like the Urban Dictionary (which provides "pull me thong" as an alternative term for whale tail[76]), the Double-Tongued Dictionary and the Wiktionary, have entries for the word.[77][78][79] The book compilation of Urban Dictionary describes the whale tail as "the shape formed when a G-string rides up high over a woman's pants or skirt".[80] The Dialect Society mentioned "longhorn" as an alternate term for the whale tail.[81] A related term – Sagging – implies the practice of wearing pants or shorts below the waist so as to reveal some or all of the wearer's underwear.[82] Another related term – Buttock cleavage – implies a minor exposure of the buttocks and the gluteal cleft between them not covered by an underwear.[83] A third related term – Visible Panty Line (VPL) – implies underwear becoming visible through clothes.[4][84]

Use of the term beyond fashion

The word of the year has other uses too, some in coinage even before the fashion connection. These uses encompass diverse areas like science (arterial branching, magnetization curvature), industrial design (photographic flash diffuser, bicycling saddles and helmets, power trowel handles, hydrofoils), art (sculptures, license plates), geography (beach formation), and one of the most polular automotive spoiler that spilled over into other vehicles as a fashion statement.

The most distal branch of the left anterior descending (LAD), or the anterior interventricular branch of left coronary artery, at the apex is called a whale tail or a pitchfork.[85] The LAD traverses the anterior interventricular sulcus, giving rise to septal and diagonal branches before bifurcating distally and tapering out as whale tails.[86] A certain behavior of hysteretic magnetization curves in bulk superconductors is described as a whale tail profile, which differs qualitatively from a plane tail profile.[87] A flash diffuser designed by photographer Gary Fong is dubbed as the "whale tail".[88] In bicycling terms, a style of saddles designed for Wilderness Trail Bikes (WTB) is sometimes called a whale tail,[89][90] as well as a certain array of LED blinker on bicycle helmets.[91]

A published article appearing in Trailer Boats magazine dated January 1989 describes a hydrofoil sold under the trade name "Whale Tail" as "a flat plate without the shape of a foil" and of one piece construction.[92] A whale tail is also one of two types of guide handles commonly used on power trowels, the other being a bicycle style handlebar.[93] Reverence, a 1989 sculpture created by Jim Sardonis on the side of Interstate Highway 89 between Exits 12 and 13 in Vermont, is popularly known as whale tails.[94] A popular specialty license plate in California has been dubbed as a "whale tail license plate", as it features a the tail of a Pacific Humpback whale's tail painted in pale blue by artist Robert Wyland.[95][96] Three beaches in Destin, Florida, Puntarenas in Costa Rica, and Sandy Bay, Jamaica are named as Whale's Tail Beach for their shapes.

One of the popular early use of the term whale tail dates back to August 1974, when the Porsche 911 Turbo debuted with large, flared, rear spoilers that were immediately dubbed whale tails.[97][98][99] The whaletail was originally designed for Porsche 930 and Porsche 935 race cars in 1973.[100][101] Both types of spoilers were designed while Dr. Ernst Fuhrmann was serving as the Technical Director of Porsche AG.[102] It was introduced to the Turbo in 1974 (as a part of the H-program), and as an option on non-turbo Carreras from 1975.[100][101] Designed to reduce rear-end lift and so keep the car from oversteering at high speeds,[103] the rubber-edges of the whale tail spoilers were thought to be "pedestrian friendly".[104]

The Turbo, with its whale tail, became an instant hit.[105] It also became one of the world's most recognizable sports cars,[106] remaining in production for the next two decades in one form or another, with more than 23,000 sold by 1989, although from 1978, the rear spoiler was redesigned and dubbed teatray on account of its raised sides.[107] These whale tail spoilers of the Porsche 911 caught on as a fashion statement,[108] and the term has been used to refer to large rear spoilers on a number of automobiles, including Ford Sierra RS,[109] Focus,[110] Chevrolet Camaro,[111] and Saab 900.[112] Whale tail spoilers also appear at the rear of tricycles,[113] trucks,[114] boats,[115] and other vehicles.

see also: Spoiler (automotive)

See also

Footnotes and references

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