In fashion, the term hipster refers to low-rise jeans and pants, earlier called hip huggers during the late 1960s and early 1970s. Hipsters can also refer to a type of underwear worn by women that sits below the natural waistline. These provide greater coverage than do bikini style underwear, but less coverage than full briefs or high leg styles that feature a high waist, although hipster panties may still be too high to wear with low waist jeans.
At the end of the 1990s, interest in lower waist pants, especially jeans, began to increase, and there was a reactionary push against high waist styles, which were dismissed as “mom jeans” (though these may be making a comeback). As such, fashion designers began marketing hipster styles, especially to teen girls and young adult women. While at first, the hipster was below the waist, the drop in waistline got even more dramatic in some of these pants, to the point where sitting down or bending over would reveal a considerable amount of the buttocks. This look might be paired with thong panties, producing a “whale tail” appearance of the panties rising above the waist of the jeans.
Men’s jeans, which were often cut lower than the waist prior to the 2000s, dropped too. Alternately, men might adopt the style of wearing such baggy pants that even belts couldn’t keep the pants adequately in place. Especially associated with “gangsta” style, showing a few inches of boxer shorts above the pants’ waist became relatively common.
Hipster pants, especially when the stomach and waist are revealed, may be worn with higher cut tops that do not cover this area. This has led to some related expressions that aren’t particularly flattering. The term "muffin top" has been adopted to refer to areas of skin that bulge out above the pants and below the shirt. When jeans are too tight or shirts don’t provide adequate coverage, and if a person is even slightly out of shape, they may risk the muffin top appearance, which is considered very undesirable.
Since hipster jeans and pants dropped so very low, there have even been some schools and small cities that have judged them indecent, and it looks like this has had an effect on emerging fashions in the later 2000s. Fewer extremely low pants are being sold and not everyone wants to wear this style. However pants that fit slightly below the waist may be more flattering on a number of women than are high waist pants, which means the hipster may never be truly out of style. Current designs tend to display less expanse of skin between pants waistline and true waistline.
