These Zara pants won't kill you. But they may try

Article Tools

Contact The Editor Articles By This Author

Zara made big, big pants. Women loved them. Women bought them. Women fell down while wearing them. They got online to warn one another. Our splendid intern Grey Battle has the full story.

Personally, I can't stop saying "Zara Death Pants" to myself over and over again.

"Zara death pants. Zara death pants. Zara death pants."

Jenifer Lewis once told Tracee Ellis Ross that if you're having a bad day, all you have to do is say "Jenifer Lewis" three times and you'll feel better. I think "Zara Death Pants" is my "Jenifer Lewis."

It has the post-consumerist irony of a Tumblr handle, the John Waters camp appeal of dying for fashion and the satisfying scansion of trochaic tetrameter.

But there's something slightly subversive afoot in the Zara death pants videos. It's not just the schadenfreude of watching people fall down (a pastime that Commes des Garçons designer Rei Kawakubo reportedly enjoys).

Watching women stumbling and making do in too-long trousers, I see the absurd adjustments we have to make in a nonsensical world. Learning to walk in a pair of cute pants that wants us dead feels like an apt metaphor for being alive right now. What else can you do but get online and laugh about it?

As Battle reported, fast fashion houses sell their pants expecting that customers will get them hemmed. This is a great idea. Alterations are the secret weapon of the rich and stylish, and investing in a relationship with your local tailor is smart, smart, smart. Or you could learn to hem your own Zara death pants after watching this guy's tutorial:

But expecting people to hem their own Zara pants is like expecting people to keep Q-tips out of their ears or use poppers to clean their VCRs. That's just not how these products work in the real world.

On social media, I'm seeing a similar phenomenon with Flock cameras. Those are the AI-enabled cameras made by a company called Flock Safety that read the license plate of every car that passes them and creates a "digital footprint" of the automobile that can be traced and tracked. They are used by more than 6,000 communities in the U.S.

As my colleague Annie Gowen wrote in May, "Flock cameras are beloved by police because officers can use the company's national database to track vehicle movements to recover drugs and stolen automobiles, and to solve even more serious crimes."

But Flock cameras have also been used by police officers to illegally track their ex-girlfriends. Over and over and over and over again.

On Thursday, a man in West Virginia was arrested on suspicion of destroying Flock cameras. When WDTV posted the news on Facebook, the comments flooded with people providing alibis for him:

"He was saving my neighbors dog from a fire all day couldn't be him." "Free my boy he ain't do it, we were playing halo 2 at the specified time." "This can't be the guy, we were both on the operating table together at the time. He gave me a kidney. I'll vouch for him."

Online, Flock critics - sometimes calling themselves "deflockers" - have been creating memes about all the ways one shouldn't tamper with these cameras (wink, wink). Others are being more overt. There are similar memes about how not to mess with data centers.

Don't get it twisted: The Zara death pants posts aren't political or revolutionary. They're not calling for civil disobedience or destruction of private property. They barely even seem mad at Zara. The Sans-Culottes they are not.

But in their videos, I hear a buzz of genuine discontent that might be part of a larger rumble.

• Lil' reccos I highly recommend "The Invite," a fast, funny four-hander written by former lovers and current collaborators Rashida Jones and Will McCormack and directed by Olivia Wilde, who also stars. We all know Penélope Cruz is beautiful and talented. I had forgotten how funny she is, too.

Historically, I haven't had great luck with audiobooks (I just tend to zone out), but I'm trying again! Last week I listened to "The Immortality Key," classicist Brian C. Muraresku's hypothesis that psychedelics and other mind-altering substances informed the ancient mystical experiences that laid the groundwork for Abrahamic religions. Trippy!

I know I already talked your ear off about Madonna‘s new album, but after simmering on it for a few weeks of repeated listening, I can confirm: "Confessions II" is a top-tier Madonna album. She's back, y'all. She's really, really back.

• Four horsies

Big things - like a giant space mirror looming over Earth - are "horsemen" of the apocalypse.

Little things - like Donald Trump looming over the World Cup final ceremony - are "horsies" of the apocalypse.

Today's four horsies: Congress passed the "Sunshine Protection Act," which would make daylight saving time permanent. I ... think ... this is ... good? More than anything, this is just driving home that no matter how many explainers I watch and read, I will never fully understand what daylight saving time is. A woman in Florida was assigned the license plate SQZ A55. And she didn't want it?? Youth is wasted on the young. Perfect license plates are wasted on the ungrateful.

If I didn't know these platform sandals that say "let loose" were made for pooping, I'd be twisting my ankle in them right now.

Look, I'm not the world's most capitalist guy. But hearing that Welch's is coming for the Smuckers crown in prepackaged peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on white bread? Well, THIS is what we mean when we talk about competition driving innovation. Jelly men, start your engines. And may the best PB&J ... win!

Shane O'Neill connects the dots between entertainment news, internet fads, celebrity gossip and pop culture ephemera to sketch a portrait of how we live today.