I have a strong memory from high school of a girl ahead of me in the lunch line having difficulty working two fingers into her hip pocket to fish out a dollar bill, while I sank my arm down to the elbow to pull out my lunch money.
Women wear their clothes a lot tighter than men which limits the usability of pockets. If you had a pocket that reached down to mid-thigh she couldn’t get her hand in deep enough to retrieve it because her pants are too tight to allow an arm in. So why make them longer?
Then there’s shorts. There’s a limit to how big the pockets in a pair of hot pants can get before they hang out the leg holes.
Notice how in clothing designed to fit looser, there are often pockets. How often have you heard the “ITS GOT POCKETS!” story about a sun dress or similar?
Women’s pants are generally stretchier even if they are tight denim so actually getting things in and out of pockets would not be an issue…if they had actual functional pockets that were more than 1" deep.
I have noticed a gen Z trend around here to not have ultra tight pants and actually having pockets. Not sure if that is more than a regional trend though.
Again, I watched a girl struggle to work two fingers into her hip pocket. Even if they are stretchier, some of that stretch will have been taken up when she buttoned them.
And knowing the world’s factories the way I do, I’m sure there’s at least one clothing manufacturer out there that makes (or made) both long jeans and hot pants to mostly the same pattern, ie the jeans are just ankle length versions of the shorts, and to save money on tooling they use the same pattern of pockets for both.
Is it to sell purses?
If you watch the video, it does make case for it to just be historical and fashion-led trend.
The sheer comedy of the guy in this video throwing a baseball and half a litre of water in his pockets made me seek out this community just to share it with others.
I had a pair of JNCO’s in the 2000’s that could hold four 2 liter bottles of soda, one each in the front side pockets and one each in the back pockets. This also meant that I could carry my entire mid-sized laptop in one pants pocket.
Not a phone. A laptop.
I would buy another pair of those pants instantly today if I could find them again.
Crazy. I have cargo pants that can carry a standard 20 oz bottle of water for my dog, and that’s a lot of loose weight banging around when I take her for a long walk
I really liked the Suffragette pants, ngl.
I’ve fit an entire Nintendo Switch in my pocket before
