I have skinny jeans and I'm not happy about it.
I've never had skinny jeans before. Of course I've put on weight since my college days -- probably around 20 pounds (I was 5'8" and 125 when I graduated. Hate me? That's OK. I hate me too now). But I never noticed a dramatic change. It just sort of snuck up on me -- this morning.
Sure, over the past 15 years I've given birth twice -- once to twins -- and I noticed that I am rounder, softer... a bit more "zaftig." And it's not like 150 pounds is even so bad. I actually feel pretty good about myself naked. I've got a little "junk in my trunk," and if I suck it in (really hard) I can achieve a sultry silhouette. My boobs have maintained a magical firmness and defied gravity despite the shifting landscape upon which they are perched.
It's just that there's a lot more "stuffing," as my daughter referred to it recently while pointing to a mound of bare skin bulging out between my pants and t-shirt. And I never really noticed.
I had always been thin. Naturally thin. I spent my life eating exactly what I wanted, when I wanted, and it burned right off. When my 10-year-old was a toddler, I could eat the macaroni and cheese off her plate and still look fabulous. It wasn't till I hit 40 that I noticed the hint of Spaghettios on my butt. But I chalked it up to just not having a lot of time to exercise. I could get rid of it whenever I wanted to. Or so I thought.
"I'm so lucky, I have a fast metabolism." I would say to friends who dared to eyeball the cup of chocolate pudding occasionally found in my hands.
And I believed this twist of fiction.
I never got rid of jeans for being too small. Only because they went out of style. And if I did have a pair of jeans long enough to notice they were getting a wee bit "snug," I was always able to give myself a plausible excuse as to why they were no longer gently hugging my hips, but rather strangling the bajeezuses out of them: they were in the drier too long; I was bloated, it's Thursday...
Maybe if designers had kept the waistlines of jeans up around my midsection this whole time, I would have had some sort of "control" group -- some reality-smacking way to gage the growth and realistically judge the ever-increasing, pudding induced, childbirth enhanced wave of flesh. Maybe then this wouldn't have happened. But no.My fat responded quite positively to the new low-waisted trend and like toothpaste coming out the top of a flattened tube, it came up and poured out over the top of it's denim tube. If they closed, they fit.
But this morning, I went to put on my favorite jeans, which had disappeared for about a year and had resurfaced after a good closet cleaning. They didn't close. It wasn't pretty.
I couldn't use any of my old excuses and I had to face the music. And step away from the pudding.
So now I have "skinny jeans." And maybe -- just maybe -- one day they'll fit again. If I diet and exercise and don't pick at my kids' chicken nuggets.
Nah. I'll just wait for them to go out of style.