Three-panel TikTok collage of women wearing patterned wide-hip forbidden pants

Forbidden Pants

2020slangdeclining

Published August 12, 2026

Forbidden Pants, also called Flare Pants, is a TikTok slang term from 2020 for high-waisted flared women's pants that users joked were too flattering to wear in public. The bit peaked between late 2020 and 2022 through dance clips, reaction stitches, and thirst videos.

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Overview

Forbidden Pants, also known as Flare Pants, is a slang term for high-waisted flared women's pants that TikTok users joked were too flattering to wear in public9. The specific style is typically Daisy Del Sol brand pants with tapestry-like patterns, sitting somewhere between yoga leggings and bell-bottoms. The "forbidden" label is tongue-in-cheek, meaning the pants emphasize the wearer's rear enough that men supposedly cannot look away10.

The bit spread mostly through Latina and Black creator communities on TikTok, and by late 2022 many videos paired the pants with Ice Spice's song "You Thought I Was Feeling You?" as background music while creators twerked to show off the fit9.

Origin & Background

Platform
Twitter / TikTok (viral spread)
Creator
@GhostyHippie
Date
2020

The clothing style had a small dedicated fanbase on Reddit well before the meme took off. The subreddit /r/GirlsInFlarePants was created on September 25th, 2018 for exactly this type of pants1. The "forbidden" framing came later, with the earliest known reference posted by Twitter user @GhostyHippie on May 18th, 2020, who captioned a photo of a woman in the pants with "The forbidden pants for women"2.

The concept jumped to TikTok that August. On August 18th, 2020, @sweet_byrdie performed the Chika Dance in the pants and tagged her video "#forbiddenpants," which is the first known use of the term on the platform3.

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How It Spread

Traction built through the fall of 2020. On September 25th, 2020, Redditor papadidit031 posted an image to /r/GirlsInFlarePants captioned "The forbidden pants," pulling over 760 upvotes1. A few weeks later, on October 14th, 2020, @jodieegrace tweeted that TikTok teens had "just discovered yoga pants" and were calling them flared leggings, a post that reached roughly 492,500 likes over two years4.

The bigger viral moment came in late October 2020, when TikToker @notkrystalpearl posted a dance video in the pants that spawned countless duets and stitches before she deleted it5. Reaction stitches kept the format alive: @kaydenquinn's October 31st stitch pulled about 103,800 plays5, while @gh0stxbby's November 1st video hit 755,400 plays6.

The format still generated content into 2022. On March 29th, 2022, @itsxanthiaa posted a testimonial-style video about being skeptical of the pants and then buying them in every color, reaching about 1.1 million plays7. Male creators joined in as well: on August 23rd, 2022, @marcus_gb posted a POV bit pretending to walk behind a Latina woman wearing the pants, hitting roughly 331,800 plays in two months8.

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How to Use This Meme

Videos typically show a woman putting on or already wearing the flared, tapestry-patterned pants, often with a caption or on-screen text calling them "forbidden"3. Common conventions include a mirror pose, a dance clip like the Chika Dance, or a POV bit where a male creator reacts to spotting someone in the pants. Late-2022 clips often used Ice Spice's "You Thought I Was Feeling You?" as the backing track9.

Frequently Asked Questions