"These pants embody a masochist aesthetic. They are ostensibly 'chill' and yet they are not comfortable..."

"... high waist, no stretch, devious center seams. At their most extreme they have the potential to be punishing both physically (you don’t feel good) and visually (you don’t look so good, either), which seems like a remarkable achievement. We have arrived at wide-leg pants that are somehow more restrictive than the typical tight ones. These pants propose a pants-strategy that is the exact inverse of jeggings."

From "Succumb to the Siren Song of Unflattering Pants."

To augment your understanding: "11 Pairs of Unflattering Pants That Will Make You Look Ugly-Cool."

You have to think about the idea that to look ugly is to be cool. You might never believe that idea, but just get your head around it. Put yourself in the shoes of — inhabit the pants of — somebody who believes that, yes, it's true. Hmm. Jeesh. Levi's has pants called "Wedgie Icon Jeans." Wedgie! This is what's so interesting here. Pants that are not ugly because they're nice and comfortable. They are ugly and uncomfortable. If you're wearing something odd looking, you don't want people to infer that you're wearing it because you don't care about fashion and just want to be comfortable. It's humiliating to wear something that elicits the noncompliment "That looks comfortable."

By the way, many years ago, in the 1970s, before I went to law school, when I fancied myself an artist, I had a day job that consisted of reading all the magazines, including all the fashion magazines. (All is only a slight exaggeration.) For 2 years, I saw the trends come and go, and the insight I remember 40 years later is that some designs are brought forward and promoted as good mostly so that a year later it could be trashed as "suddenly" looking awful. The funniest lines in the intro from the editor in chief of Vogue were making fun of something that I knew very well Vogue had quite recently, mischievously told us looked exactly right "today."

I was reading Vogue in the Grace Mirabella years, and now I feel like reading her book, "In and Out at Vogue."