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fusion delusion

Broadly speaking, compromise is a good thing. As a middle-class, moderate Canadian of average height and shoe size, I am genetically inclined to think so. In my view, the ability to reach a grudging consensus on anything from nuclear-arms policy to what's for dinner represents human behaviour in its finest form. This sort of compromise is as important to the average marriage as it is to the effective functioning of the United Nations or the managing of Canada's long-form census.

But this column isn't about the census. It's about a different but no less confounding and divisive issue: jeggings.

What are jeggings, you ask? Oh, reader: Unless you've been living somewhere sensible, like the suburbs of Iqaluit, all this time, you have no doubt been broadsided by the excruciating visual assault that is this year's so-called "hot summer trend." Jeggings, of course, are the unnatural hybrid of two classic wardrobe staples (jeans and leggings) and an example of the devastating fashion paradox that good things in combination often prove much less than the sum of their parts.

This scourge upon the style world can be regularly spotted cosseting the thighs of terminally bored teens or cutting off the lower body circulation of diehard Nickelback fans as they wait in the passenger seat for their boyfriend to get more smokes. More important, they are an astonishing reminder that, in the world of design, two rights can and often do make a wrong - in extreme cases, one so painfully incorrect that it denatures both itself and the wearer. Jeggings, in other words, are the fashion equivalent of the mule - ugly, indestructible and thankfully unable to reproduce.

When it comes to fashion, you can forget everything about compromise you learned in kindergarten. In style terms, it is evil, the slippery slope toward the most shudder-inducing of all design concepts: the hybrid.

Not convinced? Consider the following:

1) Skorts: I once worked as a cocktail waitress at a nightclub where these skirt/short combos were part of the mandatory uniform. The point, I think, was to look like you were tottering around in a miniskirt while slinging trays of Jagerbombs and hoisting kegs on your bare knees. The more you bent over to retrieve stray cigarette butts or wipe a patron's vomit from the floor, the better the tips. I lasted three shifts before they fired me for turning up in jeans.

2) Sporks: Too spilly for a spoon, too dull for a fork, the spork is the much-regretted impulse purchase of many a camper and perhaps the most useless eating utensil ever invented (after, of course, the fish knife and those ball caps with straws you attach a beer can to).

3) The El Camino: The irony-saturated hipsters among you will undoubtedly feel the impulse to defend this late-20th-century nerd-mobile, but the so-lame-it's-cool half-car/half-truck is quite stupid when you consider that the station wagon and its later incarnation, the SUV, serve exactly the same purpose and manage to seat more than two people. Even if you think El Caminos are funky, you're probably not driving one, are you? Nah, you're driving a vintage Saab.

4) Smucker's Goober Grape: Colloquially known as "peanut butter and jelly mixed together in one jar," this nauseating hybrid has long held fascination for novelty-obsessed children and unimaginably lazy moms. What do those moms do, I wonder, with the 30 seconds they save by spreading Goober Grape on their bread slices instead of traditional PB & J? Do they pause and think about how understanding and patient their son's new tennis coach is? How, for a lingering moment, his eyes locked with theirs across the court when little Connor managed his first overhand serve? Or do they read an extra half-page in Sarah Palin's biography, the suspenseful bit where she realizes she's pregnant (again) and knows she must keep it because "that's God's plan"? Maybe they just fling the bread in the Ziploc bags and holler at someone to walk the stupid dog? I'm thinking the latter.

5) The sandal boot: Self-explanatory.

6) The vodka sonic: This playfully named cocktail, invented in the early 2000s by a girlfriend of mine who wanted to watch her carbs but could not abide the non-calorific yet tasteless vodka soda, is exactly what it sounds like: one part vodka, one part soda, one part tonic. Problem is, ordering it at a crowded bar makes the bartender hate your guts. "A vodka what?" he'll inevitably snap, eyeing you warily as if to say, "What's next, sweetheart? Separate tabs and a half order of hummus and pita?"

7) Spynga: A fleeting gym fad of the 1990s, which involved half an hour of cardio cycling followed by half an hour of sun salutations. The sandal boot of fitness trends.

8) The speedball: This highly effective cocktail of cocaine and heroin is the rumoured mainline of choice for many a dead celebrity. Some of its reported victims include John Belushi, Chris Farley, River Phoenix and Jean-Michel Basquiat.

The moral of the story? Hybrids can be as bad for your health as they are ugly. Tread in those jeggings, skorts and sandal boots carefully.

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