You can also do this for dynamic urls using:
{% url 'show_user_page' user=user as the_url %}
{% if request.get_full_path == the_url %}something{% endif %}
where your urls.py contains something like:
(r'^myapp/user/(?P<user>\d+)/$', 'show_user_page'),
I know this because I just spent ages drafting a stackoverflow question, when I found the answer in the docs.
I’d say even in simple cases this might be the better approach, because it is more loosely coupled.