I Hate Skinny Jeans

The '00s will officially be known as the decade we paid money to have holes in our pants.

I am evil. My first thought upon seeing this pic of wee teenaged overly pimped out (in both the literal and metaphorical senses) Miley Cyrus was, "Huh! Even skinny starlets get muffin top!" (Although my first thought should have been, "Who let her out of the house in that pretense of a shirt?!") Now, I'm not body-snarking the teen queen - I'm snarking on her pants. Too-tight jeans have long been the bane of women and girls everywhere. Combine the size-too-small problem with the current trend of a low rise (that bit of fabric between your crotch and your navel) and you have a recipe for muffin tops that not even Paula Deen could top. Not even with struesel - and struesel makes everything better!

I'm not saying that we should go back to the days of yore when our jeans tucked into our bra bands and chafed our armpits and made all of our butts look like IMAX screens - although I do wish the artfully draped Katherine Hepburn high-waist would come back - but surely there is a middle ground between a ten-button fly and jeans that require a full bikini wax to wear (or even give you nerve damage!).

This question of denim cuts has recently been brought to mind because I too am right now sporting a wicked muffin top. (Well not now-now. Right this very instant I'm swathed in flannel jammie pants drinking a mug of peppermint tea with a sweet sleeping babe by my side. May I live in this instant forever!) But thanks to the post-preg mummy tummy that involves both extra skin and extra weight, I'm pulling a Miley with all but my largest jeans. Although I do have the sense to cover up my top half with more than an unraveled ball of yarn, so there is that.

See? Even men have this problem!

The inevitable question: Why not just buy some larger pants? Ones that don't pinch and squish and squeeze?

Answer 1: Have you seen my closet? I need more clothes like I need more butts to wipe. (As in please please potty train dearest pre-schooler. For the love of little green apples, you are THREE and you have man poops!) I have a lovely wardrobe of adorable jeans that hopefully I will fit back into at some point in the nearish future.

Answer 2 (the real answer): I'm stubborn. Not only am I attached to my favorite "skinny jeans" but I'm also attached to the idea of skinny jeans. Like any good eating-disordered girl one of the weight loss tips I have most dearly embraced was the one that tells you to buy a pair of pants a size too small and then work your butt off (literally) to get into them. Hang them on your door! Post a pic on your fridge! Dream about them! Every time you glimpse that antique wash denim you will be reminded of your goal and will step away from the jelly beans! Even at my very thinnest - a weight many told me was sick - I still had a teeny-tiny pair of jeans in my closet waiting to be slithered in to.

Back when I was in therapy - before my beloved therapist left me (!!) to go work in the prison system (!!!) - one of our main goals was to get me to let go of my skinny jeans, defined as the pair of jeans that I can only fit into when I'm on the unhealthy side of things. Sure I was amenorrheaic and cold all the time (and, um, crazy) but they were cuuuute!!

It was, I believe, the only therapeutic goal I didn't accomplish. And now it's coming back to haunt me. What is a woman just 2-months post partum doing trying on her skinny jeans in the first place? It's crazy making I tell you. So short of becoming a criminal so I can be reunited with my beloved therapist, what should I do? Bite the bullet and get rid of the jeans? Put them in a box in the attic to show my children that once upon a time we paid a lot of money for "destroyed" jeans? Is it wrong to hope that one day again they will fit? Anyone else irrationally attached to a piece of clothing that doesn't fit them? What do you think of the too-small clothing diet tip - do you find it disheartening or motivational?