Tear-Away Pants

C'mon, admit it. Unless you're really old, or ruthlessly uncool, at some point in your life you owned a pear of tear-away pants. I know I did. Mine actually looked very similar to the ones above. And why wouldn't you? I mean, it's a pair of pants, that can be removed without pulling the waistband below your feet. You can just, you know, snap them right off. Allow my assistant Miguel here to demonstrate:


See? See how that works there? A series of buttons or snaps run vertically down each side of the leg, as the buttons snap off the goods come out. Pretty cool, huh?

I remember when I first started to become aware that something as cool as tear-away pants existed in the world. A pair of pants that you could just pull right off? I imagined standing in my home, school, or office building, grabbing both sides of my waist, and woosh; no more pants. This clip from Arrested Development does a good job of explaining this dream. Skip to the 2:00 minute mark for the example.

So that Christmas, I demanded a pair of my very own snap pants. Unfortunately, upon receiving my coveted pair, I was disappointed to find that they don't really work like that. I mean, you can't just tear them off all in one go. In order to get the sort of, you know, "woosh my pants are off" effect, you have to unbutton all but like, two of the buttons. Which makes it very obvious you're not wearing real pants.

Not to mention that the snaps themselves are kind of hard to separate, and you really need two hands for each set of snaps. Which is hard to do while standing up. So it is probably necessary to sit down and do them one by one. Which makes me wonder, what the fuck is the point of these pants in the first place? They are actually harder to remove than real pants. And God knows that's hard enough.

VERDICT:
OVERRATED

P.S. In researching for this article (I know, weird right), I stumbled across a type of tear-away pant called the Zipway. Which apparently allow you to remove the pants from the waist in one fluid motion. According to the website, "the patent self-sliding zippers on the Zipway pant work effortlessly over and over for a long lasting enjoyable motion which is unmatched by any other in the industry". I was all set to whip out my debit card and order 7 of them, but then I stumbled upon the horrifying truth that these pants were developed by none other than John Starks. John freakin' Starks. The website features this choice quote from Starks himself:

"Legends are not born their (sic) made from discipline, hard work, courage, tenacity, determination, drive, respect, and passion. I am a legend, I wear Zipway."

John Starks? A legend? Ugh, kill me now.