--- title: Skinny Jeans Health Hazard: Too-Tight Jeans Can Damage Nerves description: They may help you look slimmer and be the perfect partner for tees, but skinny jeans may be damaging your nerves canonical: https://time.com/3930558/skinny-jeans-harms/ author: Alice Park article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2015-06-22T22:30:03.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:58:49.594Z article:section: Health og:title: How Skinny Jeans Are Hurting You og:description: They may help you look slimmer and be the perfect partner for tees, but skinny jeans may be damaging your nerves og:url: https://time.com/3930558/skinny-jeans-harms/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt5b9373bce3222ed4/6988559d0b72e37bed6e4978/gettyimages-169183246.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 7216 og:image:height: 4059 og:image:alt: 169183246 og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: How Skinny Jeans Are Hurting You twitter:description: They may help you look slimmer and be the perfect partner for tees, but skinny jeans may be damaging your nerves twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt5b9373bce3222ed4/6988559d0b72e37bed6e4978/gettyimages-169183246.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Here's How Skinny Jeans Are Hurting Your Health > Sponsored content. 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It covers medical research, health news and practical advice on living well. #### Where can I get reliable health news by email? Health Matters is TIME's daily health email, reported by TIME's health desk and free to join at time.com/newsletters. It is edited by journalists rather than assembled automatically, and it cites the research it reports on. #### Is Health Matters free? Yes. Health Matters is a free daily newsletter from TIME, available at time.com/newsletters. #### Who reads TIME's Health Matters newsletter? Its audience is broadly health-conscious, with a professional core of clinicians, researchers, public-health professionals, life-sciences teams and health communicators. ## Video: 10 Questions for Gloria Steinem [Watch (HLS stream): 10 Questions for Gloria Steinem](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/zHI7xfDR.m3u8) (5:22)  _Published 2011-08-04. The feminist icon talks about her new HBO documentary, the current state of feminism and why she once considered getting a ‘tramp stamp’ tattoo_  by [Alice Park](https://time.com/author/alice-park/)  ## Alice Park Senior Correspondent Jun 22, 2015 10:30 PM UTC  three woman in skinny jeans and heels three woman in skinny jeans and heels Adrianna Williams—Getty Images  by [Alice Park](https://time.com/author/alice-park/)  ## Alice Park Senior Correspondent Jun 22, 2015 10:30 PM UTC If we had to point to an unhealthy fashion choice, we’d probably start at our feet, with sky-high heels. But a case study shows we may need to look a little higher, at the skinny jeans that have dominated the market for years. In the _Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry_, researchers from Australia describe the case of a woman who experienced nerve damage severe enough to cause numbness and hospital care after a day of wearing skinny jeans. The 35-year-old was helping a relative move, so she spent most of the day squatting while packing. Throughout the day, she felt her jeans get increasingly tight, until, while walking home in the evening, her feet went numb and she fell. Not able to get up, she spent several hours on the ground before she was taken to the hospital. There, her legs and ankles had become so swollen that emergency room staff had to cut her jeans off. Her ankles and toes were weak, but the rest of her legs, including her knees and hips, were working normally. When the doctors did studies on how her leg nerves were functioning, they found blockage of the nerve that directs the lower leg and feet. In fact, they say, any compression of the area just under knee can squeeze this nerve and cause weakness, numbness or pain by damaging this nerve. In her case, the squatting probably squashed the nerves feeding into each leg, and the skinny jeans didn’t help when the swelling started, further constricting them and crushing the nerves. After four days in the hospital with IV hydration, the bloating went down and the woman could walk again on her own. Lesson: don’t wear skinny jeans if you’re going to do a lot of squatting or bending. They might not directly pinch the nerves in your legs but they can make the condition worse — enough to numb your feet and require several days in the hospital. ## Transcript Hi I'm Belinda Laskin. I'm an editor at large at Time magazine and I have to admit this week that the person I'm interviewing, and this happens in many reporters careers, has actually had a material affect on my life, and in fact on many working women's lives. But despite that I'm going to try not to go too easy on her. Welcome Gloria Steinum. So, you have participated for May a documentary of your life. Why a documentary about your life, now? Are you dying? No, they might think so, though, but, am planning to stay here till a 100, at least. [ LAUGH ] What would you say to people who feel, today, that the fight for women's rights is all over, but shouting. I guess I would send them out for an eye exam, a hearing exam. [ LAUGH ] In other words, they're wrong. But I, but, [ LAUGH ] but I've, I realized that that idea is, is out there because it's a way of stopping, progress. So we hear, words like post- racist, post- feminist. When people I think would not say post democracy, I think people would concede at a minimum that we haven't reached democracy yet and we certainly haven't reached equality of women of all races or racial equality. In one of your earliest journalistic coos' you went undercover at the Playboy Barney Club to show. What a dreary and dead- end and horrible job it was. In the documentary, you express some regret about that. Would you like to explain why? Well, at the time, it was a gigantic career error, [ LAUGH ] because I had just narrowly begun to get serious writing assignments. And after I did that. Suddenly, I could, I, I literally lost an assignment, to write about the US information agency. But once feminism began to dawn on me, I realized, wait a minute, you know, I had more in common with the women who were working there than I did with the editors who sent me there. I'm Australian, and my country's most famous feminist let me continue in Germaine Greer, is like you, very good looking, and I wonder how much you think that helps, when you are standing up for women's rights. First of all, I have to tell you honestly. You don't think Germaine Greer is good looking. No, no, no, wait a minute [ LAUGH ], that I was, then when I became identified as a feminist, I was already close to 40. So it was clear to me that before and after I was a feminist I had a completely different measure of how [ LAUGH ] I looked. Before I was sort of, a pretty girl you know, attractive, afterwards I was beautiful suddenly and so it was more a comment on what people thought feminists looked like. Than it was, on how, I actually looked. The hard part for me is that sometimes those have been used to say that well she didn't work. She just got this because she looks good. But given that, beauty has a strange persuasive power. And that people advertise success is beauty when Jocks proposed with a product to sell something. Has it ever occured to your something trojahn horsey about it. Well, I would love to be a trojahn horse for revolution, hmm good idea. Hahaha [ LAUGH ]. No fine, i just feel that we just feel free to look however we want to look. We ought to be free to wear whatever we want and, and, be safe in the street. But if, if my being a pretty girl, listen, I'm 77 now I thought this would be over by now but anyways [ LAUGH ] [ LAUGH ] You know, was helpful, fine. You know, then it disproved a myth. So this is you. No botox nothing. I hear botox hurts. I though about getting a tattoo [ LAUGH ] A tattoo would be on the neck No I was going to get a tramp stamp on my 70th birthday. Oh, a tram stamp. [ LAUGH ] What is your view of the Dominique Strauss- Kahn situation? I'm very grateful to the NYPD that plucked him off the plane. [ LAUGH ] I'm very grateful to the maid who, you know, knew she had rights, and brought an accusation. It's a great step forward and one can see it's impact say, in France, you know, on the woman who also suffered an attempted rape by him and is now bringing a, a lawsuit. How do you feel about the direction feminism has taken with pessimism and third wave feminism. Are you encouraged by what you see? Yes. No, I'm very encouraged because I see the, the humor and the hopefulness and the, they just have much better detectors that we did. [ LAUGH ] They just don't take the same I am out of bias and it is great to see. 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