Are skinny jeans out? Dear Gen Z, please leave them to us

A generational battle is raging on TikTok. About jeans. Our 30-year-old editor knows which side she's on.

How nice it is to deal with the really important things these days. Vaccination nationalism? The Blümel investigation? Minor matter. The denim dispute between Generation Z (20 to 25 year olds) and the millennials (born between the early eighties to the late nineties) on TikTok is the real topic of the hour.

If the younger semesters have their way, the skin-tight pants are finally obsolete, the millennials see it … well … differently. And react emotionally to offended.

If Gen Z have decided that skinny jeans are uncool they can peel them off my cold dead millennial body

Jeans divide generations

And me?I'm a millennial who still wears side parting (long out!), Uses the laugh-wine-emoji (how embarrassing!) … and with whom the alleged fashion faux pas is piled up in the closet. At the same time, I'm a lifestyle editor at WOMAN and should have seen the end of skinny jeans for work alone …

After all, tight cuts have not been seen on the catwalks for several seasons and the trendy brands and their fans have long been hyping models that don't stick to the leg like a second skin. And it models like Bella Hadid, Hailey Bieber or Sofia Richie would never get caught in anything other than baggy cuts by the paparazzi.

Bella Hadid in a baggy look

So it is a proven thing that the younger generation has long since swapped their skinny jeans for bell-bottoms or baggy jeans. I, on the other hand, carry them on. For reasons.

a review

Although our favorite jeans have been demoted as uncool, I feel no shame. Trends come and go in waves anyway. The best example: mom jeans. It was only a matter of time before the belly button-hiding, loose-legged jeans - previously only worn by mothers of the eighties and nineties - reappeared. Why? Because they are the absolute opposite of everything that the 00s culture around Paris Hilton or Christina Aguilera wanted to express. That youth movement that later paved the way for skinny jeans and at the same time the explanation for why I am still a fan of the tubes.

Paris Hilton in the typical look of the 2000s

From hipsters and boot cuts …

What I mean by that?When I was 16, I also let my thong flash out, but despite my size 26, I never really felt comfortable with it. The heroin chic of that time, including the prominently protruding hip bones that one was used to from the MTV music videos, was ultimately difficult to do justice to. As if the fear of bacon rolls weren't offensive enough, the other fashionable trousers of the time were cut absurdly long. They literally sanded the floor and the hem tore a little more each time they were worn. Not to mention the dirt tracks that were left on rainy days …

… too tight …

When the skinny jeans came up in the mid-noughties, it was nothing short of a revelation - and a real upgrade: dirty, gritty trouser hems, the masonry décolleté and areas of the body that were unpopularly displayed? Relics of the past. It only got better when at some point the high-cut skinny jeans variant became an it-piece!

… and back to the baggy fit …

OK. Admittedly, in the last year - like most - I've rarely worn any kind of jeans at all. In fact, Skinnys are pretty much the last piece of clothing I would want to wear right now. Which draws the bow back to the current TikTok dilemma.

The cool kids, who describe me and my peers as rocky and unhip, are somehow involved. The tight pants have disadvantages: They pinch, don't forgive a single PMS kilo and when you take them off, your socks roll down with you. Are the baggy and mom jeans of this world suddenly back in vogue? Yes. So are skinny jeans extra uncool?

Is it really time to bury her? As soon as I decide to part with my sweatpants at some point in the foreseeable future, I might think about it again. Until then I have only one thing to say: Dear Gen Z, please let us have our hoodie-boots-skinny-jeans combo. We want to feel cool for at least a few more years!