ad hoc MOM

Nov23Is it Possible to be Insulted By a Pair of Jeans?
Paula

My husband expresses a desire to purchase new clothing about as often as we earthlings are privy to a total eclipse of the sun. It’s a rare event. And much like an eclipse the interest in new clothes is very short lived. The moment must be seized! This opportunity needs to be taken advantage of and we only have a few precious moments to outfit him with pants, shirts, sweaters etc. before it’s all over and I’m left standing in line with one lame t-shirt. This is how I found myself in the Gap with half of New York City on Saturday afternoon. I’m pleased to report that my husband’s shopping excursion was so successful that I thought I’d push things one step further and try to buy myself some new jeans. The hubris!

I ask you, is it actually possible to be insulted by a pair of pants? I started looking for some jeans in my size only to be confronted by the cruelest, meanest jeans. These jeans bore the names “the always skinny” the “forever skinny” and the smug “long and lean.” This nasty trio seemed to say “We know you eat a muffin for breakfast twice a week. It totally shows. Stay away from us you carb-hoarding, muffin-loving whore.” I mean, it’s taken me years to say that I’m a reasonable size, but hell to the NO am I always skinny. I AM NORMAL. Thanksgiving is this Thursday! If I knew little Miss “always skinny” was sitting in my drawer would I be able to put gravy on my mashed potatoes or eat pumpkin pie with any pleasure at all? I think not. As for “long and lean?” I’m sure she’d eat exactly 4oz of turkey and a slice of pie so thin you could see through it. Then she’d excuse herself and go on a 12-mile run. What a wet blanket! Needless to say, I was the one who left the Gap empty handed this time.

This may look like a pile of toothpicks, but it’s actually a group of twenty-something women who buy their size two jeans at J.Crew.

And it turns out it’s not just the Gap. J. Crew’s collection of jeans features the “toothpick,” “matchstick,” “downtown skinny,” and “vintage slim.” Seriously? Why not just create a pair called “eating disorder in denim?” Do they actually think women will fall for these schemes? That we believe we’ll become as thin as rakes by putting on a pair of pants named for a toothpick? As if!

I’d be more comfortable shopping for a pair of jeans with names like this:

The “Totally Normal”:
Your hips are in fact larger than your waist, and you weigh more than 98 pounds.

The “Your Secret is Safe With Me”:
You have children (or have a serious muffin habit) and have that annoying pile of stomach that must be contained by your pants.

“The MILF” (boot cut or straight let):
You aren’t 19, you eat food on a regular basis, and you’re all the hotter for it!

Related posts:

  1. Is it Socially Acceptable to Wear Maternity Jeans When Your Daughter is Nearly Two Years Old? I’m having a fat day.  My muffin top has runneth over.  The exercise routine I had miraculously kept up for an astonishing FIVE MONTHS has...
  2. Clothes Do Make the Man. . . As Mark Twain said, “clothes make the man,” and I have to say, I agree.  One of the first things I noticed about my husband...
  3. Today Sucked BUT Then There Were Girl Scout Cookies Today sucked. P went to daycare which usually means for this adhocmom I’ve got 8 hours to accomplish everything I possibly can get my hands...

Tags: , ,

Filed Under: Fashion

ShareThis

11 Comments

  1. Tonya says:
    November 23, 2010 at 11:12 pm

    I thought JLo and Beyonce had been working overtime to dispel all this crap! Rachel Zoe and her coke habit ruin it for everyone!
    For turkey day, I plan on donning my “potato sack so that you can be so full you feel ill and must be rolled from one side of the apartment to the other” outfit.

  2. Carrie says:
    November 23, 2010 at 11:19 pm

    Look, the jean situation out there is so out of control, I am beside myself. Beside myself!!!! Boot cut jeans are OUT, I am told. It’s skinny, skinny, skinny and that ain’t a look for me. I gave it a year, tops. But it’s been like five fricking years with these skinny jeans. Look, they look great on other people. But I’m a person too. Wait, am I? am I a person? So, what to do? Also–perhaps the biggest insult of them all–THE SKINNY CARGO PANT. skinny.cargo.together!!!! That’s just what I want…leggings with big flappy pockets. F u, people, FU! sorry. it’s a sensitive subject for me.

  3. Paula says:
    November 23, 2010 at 11:27 pm

    A woman at the Gap tried to hand me a pair of long and leans and urged me to try them on. “They will make you LOOK long and lean” she said to me. For about .05 seconds I believed her. She totally bewitched me with visions of long legs in cute boots. It took every ounce of will I had not to shout LIAR LIAR LIAR and toss those denims right back in her face.

  4. Sherry Stanfa-Stanley says:
    November 24, 2010 at 11:53 am

    I would so TOTALLY buy a pair of jeans featuring a “forever skinny” label. Do they come in size 14?

  5. deborah l quinn says:
    November 26, 2010 at 2:17 pm

    I fucking hate jean shopping. There. I said it. It’s not only the insultingly cut jeans (sized in Calista Flockhart, Nicole Richie, and all those idiots on Gossip Girl) but also the CHOICES: dark wash, light wash, boot cut, low rider, hip hugger, boy friend, indigo wash, ring-dyed, japanese dyed, buried for two days with moles and dyed green then washed with rocks and rare agates to achieve the perfect silvery gleam that will catch every thigh billow, every hip pucker, every ass crease.
    I stand there paralyzed for a while, then leave fuming. A few years ago, I bought two pairs of Levis (remember levis?) on sale for like 15$ each; they make me look long & lean, I SWEAR (and I’m more of a gently rounded gal, in my altogethers) and I should’ve bought 12 pairs in every color. They don’t make them any more, of course. Weep. Sob. Weep.

  6. deborah l quinn says:
    November 26, 2010 at 2:18 pm

    Sorry. Wee rant there. What I meant to say was, in answer to your question, yes, it is very possible to be insulted by a pair of jeans.

  7. alonewithcats says:
    November 27, 2010 at 12:51 am

    Best. Caption. Ever.

    I used to make sad faces at the Long and Lean jeans at the Gap. Then my friend Diane convinced me to try them on. She explained to me that the Long and Leans are actually for people who are Short and Squat, to give the appearance that we Short and Squats are actually Long and Lean. These are the only jeans that fit me well. I have four pairs. True story.

  8. Suniverse says:
    November 30, 2010 at 3:58 pm

    How are you not already designing clothing that I can buy? Because I need some new stuff, and have zero interest in getting to the mall because oh holy christ, the idiocy of styles and sizing.

  9. Mercedes Jones says:
    November 30, 2010 at 10:09 pm

    I just saw on the Carters website an item called “skinny pants”. For toddlers!!!!!! At 2T girls are already being told that “skinny” is in. : (

  10. Melissa says:
    December 2, 2010 at 10:01 am

    Jesus. The insanity. Shopping for jeans is akin to getting wisdom teeth pulled, very very slowly. Attempting to shimmy into pre-pregnancy jeans post-partum is akin to being jeered at in the playground by all the blonde, perfectly-coiffed straight A students. I am currently in my “boot cut” “low-rise” jeans that give me builders bum every time I bend down to pick up my 8 month old. Tres chic. But I just can’t face shopping for new ones!

  11. 2011 Fashion to Moms: “Merry Christmas!”; Moms to 2011 Fashion: “Hallelujah!” « ad hoc MOM says:
    December 24, 2010 at 6:01 am

    [...] avoiding for as long as I can hold out: cropped sweaters, skinny jeans (Paula has already covered this topic for all of us!), eighties shoulder pads, the tuck and roll boyfriend jeans. These things can look [...]

Give us your two cents

CommentLuv Enabled
 

© 2010 ad hoc MOM. All rights reserved. Powered by WordPress. Designed by Carrie Harvey.
Entries (RSS) and Comments (RSS).