‘I feel like I’ve been traumatized’: Woman spots her first sight of an eyebrow-raising fashion trend in the wild, and now she’ll never recover

A new fashion trend is spreading like wild among young people, but it doesn’t have many fans among older generations.

I know, I sound like an old man shaking my fist at the sky, but some fashion trends were never meant to be. I’m not going to go after anyone for the reign of the crop top, which has been at the height of its game for a good decade now, or in general for baring too much skin, but there is a line, and the young women of TikTok are working to cross it every day.

The bubble skirt trend is quickly becoming an all-out fashion phenomenon, but to the majority of people witnessing it from the outside, it feels like a prank. There’s no way these girls are just sauntering out into public like that, right? ….right?

Wrong. As was recently discovered by TikTok user Sara (@sara_smile04), who promptly — upon seeing a bubble skirt in real life — asked the platform “how we outlaw them.” Noting that she feels “traumatized” by the experience, Sara explains that she’s “never seen that much booty cheek on someone I wasn’t married to, or birthed.”

Perhaps the best description I’ve ever heard of the skirts is nestled about halfway through Sara’s video, when she says “it looked like a scrunchie.” That is exactly what these insane items of clothing look like — like young women re-discovered the scrunchies of our youths and decided to turn them into skirts. Same amount of fabric, same amount of coverage, just relocated to a different part of the body.

If you’ve never seen a bubble skirt for yourself, you probably think both Sara and I are exaggerating. We. Are. Not. These skirts are a truly insane fashion decision, but you have to see them for yourself to truly understand. So let me be the poor soul who introduces you to Gen-Alpha’s cursed new fashion trend.

Y’all. Her cheeks are fully out.

There is something to be said about which frames suit the skirt best. To be clear, I personally think that scrunchies belong on our heads, not our waists, but those with smaller backsides can certainly pull off the trend with fewer unexpected cameos from down under. It harkens back to the horrific trends of the ’90s — there’s always at least a few per decade — of low-rise jeans that were practically x-rated. Sure, Paris Hilton pulled off the look fine, in her own way, but put those same jeans on a girl with curves and you’re suddenly stumbling into an NC-17 production.

This is an unfortunate side effect of having a curvaceous body. It’s not any of these girls’ fault, and they shouldn’t be judged any more than their peers just because the gods gave them a bit more to work with. The unfortunate result, however, sees rampant butt cheeks gracing our streets, stores, and bars, and Sara isn’t alone — the older generation as a whole doesn’t know what to think.

But, like every other generation before, the youths aren’t going to listen to our ancient opinions. Where we say “too short” they hear an infringement on their right to express themselves, and like all of us who wore disturbingly low jeans and those eye-melting velour tracksuits (gag), they will promptly forget every criticism they hear from the older generations, and ride those bubble skirts straight into the sunset.