Since the onset of the skinny jean phenomenon over the past few years, nobody has been a bigger opposing force than me. I hated skinny jeans. I thought they were the fugliest articles of clothing since scrunchies and T-shirt cinchers. I swore I’d never wear them and I’d never be friends with anyone who did. Heaven knows I’ve knocked them enough times on my blog. They reminded me of leggings, and I didn’t understand the appeal of wearing leggings around like real jeans. Give me bootcut jeans any day (36 inch inseam, please and thank you), and I’m a happy camper. No, no, no…skinny jeans were not for me.
But lately, I’ve been wearing a lot of tunic-like shirts…
…you know the kind: long, flowing, loose-fitting cotton prints. Maternity shirts, essentially. (A loose-fitting tunic by any other name is still a maternity shirt.) I’ve been buying more and more of them from my local second-hand store, and it has come to my attention that they might look better with a pair of skinny jeans. Otherwise, they just look like pregnancy shirts.
So I’ve been contemplating choking down an enormous slice of humble pie, and then last week Shalynna (private blog, or else I’d link to it—sorry, everyone) said this about my legs:
“I meant to comment on the post where you included a picture in thermals. I was going to say that 1) You have the cutest body and 2) You should wear skinny jeans/pants because the thermals looked cute!”
It was a nice thing to say, but I balked at it initially—me? Cute body? Not the last time I checked. But even though I feel awkward and uncomfortable discussing it, I will admit that if there is ever a time in my life that I should try out the skinny jean fad, now is it: I’m 23, I’m young, and I’m only going downhill from here. Plus, my real problem area is my midsection, and since I wear pregnancy shirts anyway, my muffin top would more or less be concealed.
So I decided to take the plunge.
I’m going to buy a pair of skinny jeans.
The first step in this process was actually trying on a pair of skinny jeans, since I have, until now, avoided them like the bubonic plague. I had to make sure they were something I could feel comfortable in, something I could get used to.
In an uncanny turn of events, the selfsame day I decided to try out a pair of skinny jeans I also somehow found myself at the mall with time to kill (an unfortunate situation indeed, but there I was). I meandered into Gap and accosted a sales associate—I figured I was totally clueless, so why waste time trying to muddle my way through the process when some poor sap folding shirts was probably dying for a diversion? (I’ve worked in retail before. Many times.) So I hailed down a sales associate—my new BFF—and put it to her straight: I’m fashion-challenged, I need help, and you’re it.
She hooked me up with two pairs of skinny jeans in two different sizes and locked me in a fitting room, making me promise not to come out until I’d made peace with at least one of them.
Nervously, I slipped into the smaller of the two sizes (an eight, since I know you’re dying to know), zipped them up (gleefully, because I can’t remember the last time I zipped up a size eight on myself), and peered into the mirror…
I turned around, examined my body from all angles, faced the mirror head-on again, and took a deep breath…
…and I kind of liked them. No—I really liked them.
Sadly, though, when I stepped out of the fitting room and asked the sales associate if they looked right, she told me they were a bit too short (story of my life) so I could either wear them tucked into boots, or rolled up to look like cropped 50’s-ish jeans. Apparently, skinny jeans are meant to hit at or slightly below the ankle, like this:
Image from here.
I was disappointed, but I can see that she was right.
Here they are normally (with me looking nothing like the above model):
And here they are cuffed:
On top of not being quite the right length, they were eighty bucks normally, on sale for fifty, and if I’m going to pay that much for a pair of staple jeans, I want them to be the right length. I was semi-tempted just to buy them and only wear them hidden under boots, but I’ve decided to be patient and wait for the right pair to come around.
I know it’s out there.
If I’m lucky, maybe it will appear as next week’s Saturday Steal.
I know a lot of people still hate the skinny jean look. I know a lot of people might be happy that I’ve finally come around. Really, it doesn’t matter who thinks what about my clothing decisions. I’m not asking for your permission, or even your blessing. Just your support.
Come to think of it, why on earth do I even bother to blog? What a waste.
Side Note:
What’s not a waste, though, is the fact that La Coccinelle won a $6.00 gift card to Amazon.com for being selected as a random winner from the first ever Saturday Steals event here at Archives of Our Lives.
What? What’s that, you say? You didn’t know there was going to be a randomly-selected prize for those who submitted posts to Saturday Steals? You didn’t know there would be something in it for you? You wish you had known, and you might have thought twice about standing me up for my own blog party?
That sucks.
The good news is that, finances permitting, I’ll be hosting giveaways every week for Saturday Steals entrants. The value of the gift card I give away will be equal to the value of Saturday Steals submissions. I’m only sorry La Coccinelle’s gift card isn’t more than six bucks. That’s kind of lame. Hopefully you can get some kind of steal with it, La Coccinelle.
Keep your eyes peeled for more steals, and hopefully we’ll have a bigger turnout next weekend!
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