Male crop tops are trendy in New York, could I make it happen in rural Cambridge?
'It feels oddly provocative, like I am deliberately trying to draw people’s eyes exactly towards a part of my body that arguably doesn’t need too many eyes on it'
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'It feels oddly provocative, like I am deliberately trying to draw people’s eyes exactly towards a part of my body that arguably doesn’t need too many eyes on it'
Mike in his freshly fashioned crop top (Photo: supplied)
By Mike Rampton
July 18, 2023 6:00 am(Updated 6:01 am)
Men in crop tops are having something of a moment. Instagram is flooded with fellas in belly shirts, while TikTok features endless how-to guides detailing what to do to shorten a top. (You need a T-shirt and some scissors, it’s not rocket science.) No less an authority than The New York Times has declared it a trend. It’s official: male crop tops are so hot right now.
Also so hot right now? The planet. June was the hottest month on record. Odds are, that record won’t be held on to for very long. In this heat, men’s shorts have been getting shorter for a few years, with a mid-thigh hemline increasingly more common than a knee-length pair, so it makes sense that shirts would follow – if we’re going to insist on making the planet uncomfortably warm, we might also need to rethink our wardrobes.
Prince was keen on the tiny tops (Photo: Gutchie Kojima/Shinko Music/Getty Images)
There’s no inherent reason men shouldn’t embrace crop tops. There’s plenty of precedent – American footballers have been wearing them for decades, Prince was a huge fan, and Matthew McConaughey wears one while working out in Magic Mike. Alex Winter sported one in Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, and Adam Sandler spends most of the admirably dumb 1994 comedy Airheads in a shirt that stops well above his navel. Premiership footballers regularly wear performance-tracking sports vests that end just below the nipple.
With this in mind, it is the height of summer, there are scissors in my kitchen and an editor waiting, so I might as well get on with this.
As soon as I finish cutting a strip off an old T-shirt and pop it on, a couple of things become very clear. Firstly, I’ve taken it up higher than I perhaps needed to (maybe I should have watched some of those TikTok videos after all). Secondly, with one glance in the mirror I am dramatically reminded why my clothing decisions aren’t normally based on what Matthew McConaughey wore in Magic Mike.
I … don’t look good. All the men mentioned above, and most of the male crop top enthusiasts on Instagram, are in incredible shape. The appeal of a crop top to someone whose torso looks like it was sculpted by the gods is fairly clear – if you work hard to get a glistening, rock-hard six-pack, or a glorious deep-V inguinal muscle, you want to show it off. Hiding all that effort behind a barrier of fabric seems criminal.
Now, basic knowledge of anatomy suggests my body does have muscles in it somewhere, but they’re not what you’d call “glistening” or “glorious”. Or even “visible”. Jack Grealish’s hi-tech sports vest exposes the flawless midriff of an elite athlete, while my cut-off T-shirt reveals the hairy, beer-filled stomach of an indoorsy 40-year-old who types for a living.
Mike discovered he had cut a little too high… (Photo: supplied)
It’s quite disconcerting. While I have no problem at all taking my top off at beaches, pools and festivals, this feels somehow like a level beyond shirtlessness. It’s the same kind of phenomenon as a man wearing only a T-shirt looking somehow more nude than if he were entirely naked (aka the Winnie the Pooh paradox).
It feels oddly provocative, like I am deliberately trying to draw people’s eyes exactly towards a part of my body that arguably doesn’t need too many eyes on it. Having a gap where there isn’t normally one feels like much more of a statement than I had anticipated. As a quiet, grumpy man, most of the statements I make are mumbled ones about traffic congestion, not flamboyant ones inviting people to gaze upon my flesh.
This wobbly band of newly exposed pastiness is broadcasting a message: “Hey everyone. Look at this bit of me!” It might even be doing the same at the back with the top of my arse-crack. This is dreadful. I can’t go anywhere like this.
All of those problems, however, are mine. There’s nothing fundamentally wrong with the crop top as an object. It’s perfectly comfortable, and it’s genuinely pleasant feeling the fresh air on my stomach and lower back – it’s like a shirt with air conditioning. If I could bring myself to leave the house, I could get most of the temperature benefits of walking around shirtless without the risk of sunburt shoulders or my rucksack straps chafing my nipples. There’s plenty to be said for that.
In a looser fit with a lower crop it would be less wildly unflattering, and ideally less panic-inducing – a fairly ideal way to stay a little bit cooler when going for a bike ride in the summer, or avoiding getting too hot on a run. I don’t know that I’ll ever be likely to show up to school pick-up with my sweaty gut deliberately hanging out, but again, that’s on me. Clothes change, and what we think of as normal or appropriate for various occasions is always shifting. T-shirts were originally primarily an undergarment, and the idea of it being acceptable to turn up to a professional job in trainers was once unthinkable. Over the next decade or so, we might start to see a lot of exposed male stomachs, and why not?
Wearing less is the easiest way to stay cool in an overheating world, and it’s not like everyone will do it – more widespread adoption of crop tops by men doesn’t mean we’ll soon be seeing undertakers with their morning suits slashed to just below the nipple.
Currently, the male crop top is primarily in the hands (and on the bodies) of the extremely attractive, but these things trickle down and soon enough it won’t seem out of the ordinary at all to see a middle-aged man walking into a bank in a belly shirt. I might do a few sit-ups between now and then, though.
