Cheeky yet wholesome shorts worn by Zoomers

Fashion field report: the combo of high-waisted and loose-fitting bottoms, popular with Zoomers, has given birth to a new level of cheekiness in girls' shorts.

But it's somehow convincingly wholesome because the high-waisted-ness means there's lots of fabric, covering all the way up to her belly button (and sometimes higher). So, the shorts do not appear skimpy, and she does not appear scantily clad.

It's like our eye is judging how much of her overall body is covered, not just the sexually charged zones. If half of her buns are showing, but above that is covered up to her ribcage? Meh, doesn't feel very slutty.

The impression was a lot sluttier back in the 2000s when bottoms were low-waisted and tight (around the butt anyway, could have flared out toward the ankle during the early 2000s). Even if shorts fully covered the lower part of the butt, the waist was so low-rise that you'd see the top of their butt, and it just didn't cover much of her overall body at all. Almost like a fig-leaf from a cartoon -- a hand-towel wrapped around the lower 2/3 of her butt.

The fact that this is a new combination suggests that the fashion cycles for how high the waist is, and how tight the fit is, are decoupled and on somewhat different time-scales. Last time bottoms were so high-waisted was the '80s, and yet they were tight back then. Last time bottoms were so loose-fitting was the '90s and early 2000s, and yet they were more low-waisted back then. For the first time in a long while, high waists are coinciding with loose fits.

I thought I'd noticed this shift over the summer, but during the past week several girls were out to get my attention, and then turned straight around to show off their cheek-o-rama shorts.

Tonight I dropped by the supermarket, and there was a cute short blonde teen there, with looong hair (another facet of Zoomers' casual sexiness), in what looked like ordinary gym shorts. She's the only one in the aisle, so I'll turn the corner and head toward her, as she's begun walking towards me. Wearing gym shorts to the supermarket on Friday night? Validation-seeking.

Also, she's probably been trapped indoors and existing even more online due to society's corona panic (she was maskless), and she needs some IRL attention. No amount of likes and subs on her social media account hit as hard as getting looked up and down by a hungry-eyed 10.

Later I saw her in the checkout with her mom, so I'm assuming she's part of the new crop of wild-child types who were born during the last restless phase of the 15-year excitement cycle, 2005-'09, as profiled in this recent post. They're getting a lot more forward, including scandalizing while in the company of their parents. Then again, she did have a sad-girl look, so maybe she's from the 2000-'04 cohort, and was 17 or 18.

After some initial eye-contact, when she gets close she suddenly spins around, and I'm cool because I know she isn't going to walk away out of the aisle -- it's just the standard move of girls showing their back when they get a little nervous around someone they like, and/or want to show off their butt. In her case, probably both.

Honey bunny is showing the bottom third of her buns just by walking plainly. Then she turns sideways to pretend to look at some item, so her back is facing the middle of the aisle. Maybe she adjusted her shorts without my noticing, or maybe it's the new angle on the high side slit -- but more than half of her ripe, tan bubble is sticking right out there. It's not just underbutt -- you can see the outer upper part where it curves back toward her body.

The high-waisted aspect gives it the wholesome impression -- lots of fabric, lots of skin covered up overall. But unlike tight-fitting dolphin shorts from the late '70s or '80s (or their revival in the late 2000s), these are fairly loosey-goosey, so they don't cling in place. They easily shift around to get out of the way. That makes them more revealing of the ass, and yet not so scandalous because the shorts themselves are not clinging like second skin.

What makes the tight-fitting ones scandalous is that they leave nothing to the imagination. The current style may reveal more than half of her ass toward the outside and bottom, but the other region toward the center and top has a loose-fitting piece of clothing over it. You don't see the shorts clinging to the inner upper part, where her butt cleavage is. That part is left to the imagination.

Somehow that's enough to counterbalance the large amount of cheekage on display.

It's not the same as a high-cut bikini bottom. Those are still form-fitting in the center and upper region, so they very much look skimpy and scantily-clad. This style is more of a loose, flowy, oversized bikini bottom, for everyday validation-seeking environments, not swimming.

And it doesn't look baggy in the sense of shapeless or boxy either. Not an unflattering profile. Loose, casual, just rolled outta bed with her bubbalicious bod already in peak form, y'know, the yoozh.

Don't bother image searching -- most of them are older pictures showing fairly form-fitting stuff for "cheeky shorts". I tried to find a helpful pic for this post, but no help from the internet. Just go wherever there's a bunch of Zoomers IRL, and you'll see at least one wearing the contempo style.

Despite it being technically fall, we're in for another week of 80-degree weather, so you'll have plenty of opportunities to catch them in the wild for awhile longer.