Jeanorama

Sick and tired of jeans that

• sag in the rear
• are too long
• are faded beyond belief
• are too low in the front
• have broken zippers
• are just plain ugly

I went on a quick shopping spree during lunch to buy some much needed pantage. Thank goodness. I found a bunch of things the exact right size (difficult with proportionally short legs with thighs on the big side relative to my butt), so I got three pairs of jeans and a couple of shirts on sale, as well as a replacement hoodie for my broke-down-five-shades-of-not-black-anymore one.

My problem finding jeans leads me to think about the problems that most women I know have finding their size. My numeric size is quite common, so I don’t have a problem with that, but usually, the pants are too long. Even the shortest sizes are a teeny bit long. Other women tell me that their thighs are too big, their butts are too big/small, the waist is too high/low, etc.

I feel like in the last 10 years, women have been offered more choices than ever before for jeans in particular, so I’ve been really grateful, but there’s still a long way to go. In high school and college, I was always stealing my brother’s jeans because I was so sick of wearing girls’ jeans, which all had high waists and didn’t sit at my hips. And men’s jeans have a waist AND inseam length. I wish women’s clothes all had the same deal.

Last week, in my dentist’s office, the dental assistant brought me a random magazine while I was waiting in the chair. It was Ladies’ Home Journal or something. There was a section on how high waisted jeans slimmed down your errant tummy. I was horrified because I had thought that high waisted jeans were something we had evolved beyond and would never see again. High waisted jeans always just made the belly area look bizarre, no matter who you were.

Fashion is weird.