Dirty Little Secret

If we can give an old man an erection that lasts for hours, why can’t women’s pants fit?

Even when I was skinny, I was curvy. I’ve always had a waist and hips and blamed them for the fact that I never found pants that fit well. Jeans that fit me everywhere else bagged in the waist and pants that fit my waist cut off circulation to my thighs. And the behind would always been inappropriately tight or completely baggy. In college, after eating enough pizza to go from skinny to medium, I discovered men’s jeans.

Yes, even with my waist and hips men’s jeans worked. I don’t know whether it was the consistency of the 30 inch waist that lulled me into a false sense of confidence. It was also the nineties, so my men’s jeans worked well with my flannels or my blazers. And maybe I just didn’t care about how my clothes fit, little grungy hippy that I was.

But after college, the problem returned. And no matter how skinny (or not) I was, no matter where I shopped, pants that fit eluded me. Some women probably solve this problem with tailors. Since I have been known to leave clothing at the drycleaners for a month, I’ve always been reluctant to use a tailor. Plus, I feel like if I already paid for the item of clothing, it should fit me.

Eventually, I discovered that washing Old Navy’s low-rise stretch jeans in cold water gave me the perfect jean. Then I discovered the magic pants. It was May and Marshalls was having a sale. They were black Ralph Lauren capris and they cost less than twenty bucks. They fit me in the waist, hips and butt. They seemed to contract and expand as I lost or gained weight. They made me look ten pounds thinner. They FIT.

As I bragged about them, I discovered that every woman I knew had the same problem with pants. My skinny friends, my voluptuous friends, my plus-sized friends, my friends with boyish figures, everyone. None of them found another pair of the capris at Marshalls, but they did begin suggesting that I wear them every time we went out. Everyone came to believe in my magic pants.

And that makes me sad. Surely pants that fit and make you look good shouldn’t be so rare as to be magic. It’s enough to make you think that there’s a designer conspiracy out there, plotting with the diet industry to make every woman believe that she needs to change her body in some way to make pants fit well.

And alas, the magic pants are no more. The summer after Ironflower was born, they had to do a lot of duty. But that was also the summer I became (unknowingly at the time) pregnant with Lovebug. In September they split not on a seam, but right down the front by the closures (fortunately this was while I was getting dressed and not while I was at work). I still have them, packed away with some other keepsakes.