No, really. I do. And when I say “pants”, I don’t mean “pants” in an American “I know they’re trousers, but I’ll call them pants” way*. I mean pants, as in underpants. Although when I say “the internet”, I mean “a web address”.
No, not a dodgy web address. The manufacturer’s web site.
I have to admit, I’m confused by this. I understand manufacturers’ need to get their web address onto every conceivable surface, but to embroider a URL into your pants? Fair enough if it were on the outside of the pants – while it’s not a look I go for myself, I understand that The Kids prefer to wear jeans that expose their pants to a cold, cruel world – but it isn’t. The URL is printed on the inside of the pants, not the outside. And to make sure that I don’t miss it, it’s repeated all the way around the inside of the waistband.
What I’m trying to understand here is why the manufacturer felt the need to put its URL inside my pants (and presumably – although I haven’t researched this – inside the pants of all their other customers). Is it promotion? Then they’ve put it in a silly place, because the only time someone other than the owner of said pants is likely to see the URL is in an intimate moment, and if that’s the case the last thing you want them to be thinking about is a web site full of pants – or worse, for them to interrupt proceedings to go and look at a web site full of pants.
Is it as a reminder? “Ooh, I’ve put on weight, I need to buy bigger pants – but I don’t know where to go! Ooh! Wait a minute!”
Is it for more information? “I’m really enjoying these pants, but I feel that I could enjoy them more. If only I could find out about the manufacturing process and the exact make-up of the fibres!”
Or is it to make me feel sexy? “I have a URL in my pants and I feel slinky!”
Probably not. I suspect that, like many things in the modern world, the manufacturer has embroidered its URL in my pants because it thinks that if you don’t have a web address, you might as well not exist – and it’s hidden the URL because nobody in their right mind wants pants with a sodding great hyperlink printed on them. So in one fell swoop the firm has created not just pants, but e-pants; and as we all know, e-anything is better than the old, dull, non-internet version.
They aren’t just pants, then; they’re techno-pants – and that means my buttocks are living in the future.
* This confuses me too. If Americans’ trousers are pants, what do you call pants? Clearly you can’t call them pants, because then people would think you were talking about trousers, not pants. I suppose you could call them shorts, but if you do, then what name do you use for shorts? Thinking about this is giving me a headache.