Ladies, get together with me on this:
Much like when they decided to go “universal” with cellphone chargers…allowing for ONE, standard connection needed for ONE standard of Droid phone and ONE standard (now erroneous) of the iPhones…so that instead of having to schlep and save 45 different chords, one could simply arrive at ones destination with, “hey, anyone have a charger…my phone is dying,” and one would readily be supplied with it; Much like this, I would like to argue for the same system to be implemented to pants.
…Pants, specifically…I don’t need to go all Nazi on every version of every clothing line from here to Europe…but surely…SURELY we could get together on some kind of universal pant-sizing.
…Because, as any woman will tell you: purchasing a single pair of those bastards takes far too much work, requiring us to get naked in a dressing room far too many times, in far too many departments of the store, with far too many brand-to-size-ratio differences, and often makes us far too depressed in the end to buy anything at all.
Ever since the skinny-pant revolution, I’ve been on pant-purchasing strike.
…On the off-chance that I find a decent pair of boot-cut that also fit over and thus balance out my thigh’s and butt, but don’t have me hula-hooping the waist…I buy the FUCK out of those bastards. 3…5…however many pairs I can manage financially at the time. Because (for those new here), I’m a Latina, who is forever buying too-long shirts to cover my butt-crack popping out of low-rise jeans…even when I’m standing up. And the skinny-jeans (aka “denim leggings” for those of us who lived through the 80′s the first time), are a fantastical and disgusting joke on a body build with any curve at all.
…Which is why I’d flatly refused to buy any more pants at all. Because, thanks to whatever “fashion” sets as the “new thing,” is what every one of us is harbored with. Whether our body type flatly refuses to conform or not. Listen: I’m still dealing with the last one, where belt loops and the top buttons end at somewhere five inches below your belly button, requiring belt-cinching hugging the bejesus out of halfway around your butt, squeezing for all it’s worth, just to stay up…while producing a mass of muffin top that looks like you’re wearing an inner tube under your shirt.
…I’ll be damned if I lower myself to the legging phase.
…Despite all that, though…I found myself having to face reality the other day, while staring in my closet.
Due to weight loss, (and general usage), of the line-up of pants before me, only three of them were ones I could actually physically wear at the moment. And did you know, there are 7 days to the week? That doesn’t add up. Something was gonna have to be done. And so, I girded my loins, and with a gigantic, melodramatic sigh, made way for the mall.
…Perhaps if I had been gifted the girl-shopping gene, I wouldn’t have hated the process so much. But I somehow doubt it. No sooner was I in the store, facing said pantage, than I realized: I had no fucking idea what size I was even looking for. I hadn’t purchased pants since well before the elections…and this was therefore going to require math to even come up with a doable guesstimate…not because of the time-lapse, but because of the amount of weight I had gained, and lost since that point in time.
…And after that, it was dealing with literal size label differences. This one is a 10, that one is a 32 x 31…and after that: the brand name game.
Everyone knows that “this” brand runs small, “that” one runs big…I’ve never actually physically gotten the brand right there over my thighs no matter WHAT size I’ve ever picked…and don’t even get me started about how the style of “straight leg,” “boot cut,” “flair,” “relaxed fit,” “skinny,” “petite, ” “curvy” and “regulars” do to the overall size adjustments as well.
…The long and short of it, had me naked three times in three different dressing room sections of the store, trying on up to five size ranges, ending in only uber frustration.
Tell me how it is that I wore a size 10 that was too big, into the store, but couldn’t even button that one label’s size 12′s? How does my inseam length change no matter WHAT pair of pants I put on…thus making me walk like a penguin with this one, and dragging 3 inches of pant below my feet with another? Why do they assume that “curvy fit” means your ass, hips and waist all equal one another in a cylindrical tube, so that in order to get something that doesn’t sausage or suck the life out of one part, leaves all the others with enough excess material (once belted), to accordion around you…feeling like a waist-version of an Elizabethan ruffle collar…or a tutu? Do they really still not understand how ethnic bodies of a certain robustness work in the clothing industry? I mean, pull one of my people off the assembly line, and fit it to fit her…it’s really not that difficult, you guys. It’s not like we’re exactly the minority anymore…neither in heft nor curve. We’re kinda everywhere…go to a Mall, I swear it to you!
…Anyway…roughly an hour in, I just gave up. I was tired. Tired of wandering around flipping through denim and Dockers. Tired of looking at my naked, dimpled skin staring back at me from the horror-lights of the dressing rooms. Tired of graduating in sizes after all the work I’ve done to lose this damn weight. I was just plain, “tired.” Period.
…So I stopped.
Three pairs of pants were just gonna have to do me. I’d made it work this long, I’d have to just keep at it until such time as I finally lose enough to downgrade from the current “tweener” size of not fitting into anything quite right, and my next-size-down wardrobe I have just hanging there, waiting for me to fit back into it again.
Enough is enough.
…And yet, this morning, as I ruffled through the same closet, looking at thesame set-up as I always do: I picked out (due to curiosity and the desperate need for some variety) one of my other pairs on a hanger.
…I held them up.
…I gauged the width, and my current frame.
…I looked at the label at the waste, shrugged, and gave it a shot anyway.
…And the fucker buttoned and zipped.
Just like that.
A size 8.
What the hell, you guys?!
…Even with delirious cravings I’ve managed to smack down for the past three weeks, there is just no way, with monthly water gain, I lost up to 4 pant sizes in 4 days. It’s scientifically impossible. I know it didn’t happen.
…And this is all to say:
Dear pant-makers of the world,
Get your shit together. Get organized. Get some kind of through-line system going. Then please, get it out there into the fucking mass-market so we can finally, finally, FINALLY know what the hell size we are wearing!
Sincerely,
~D
