I Used To Love You, But Now I Hate You

Jeans. They can evoke so much emotion in us: the hot jeans we wear on a date, the skinny jeans we can finally fit into, mom jeans we vow never to wear, the comfy jeans we’ll never throw out.  The assignment this week is to write a piece – fiction or creative non-fiction – in which jeans play a prominent role.  You can even write an ode if you’re so inclined.  Word limit is 600.

I remembered the days when jeans used to be the one thing I couldn't live without. I could wear jeans morning, afternoon, and night.  I felt that I always looked good in jeans.  Needless to say, I hearted jeans.

Fast forward twelve short years later, if there is one thing in my wardrobe that I hate the most, it is jeans. Nowadays, I cringe whenever I open up my closet and see the section where I put all my jeans.  My hatred increases exponentially in regards to my weight.  Whenever I feel skinny, the hatred waters down into a mere dislike.  The opposite and my hatred would quickly grow into loathing.

It doesn't matter what kind of jeans it is--skinny, bootleg, flare, straight-leg, low-waist, high-waist--trying to close the only gawddang button on that thing is already enough to inspire a panic attack.  I swear, it used to be a smooth, simply slip-on kind of thing! 

Okay, I admit, maybe a bit of wiggle-wiggle.  No biggie.

Now?  No amount of jumping up and down, lying-down while buttoning, sucking my breath until my lungs were on fire, would make the whole process any easier.  My biceps got muscle aches just from trying to pull the two bloody ends together.  Not to mention the raw blisters on my thumbs.

And on the few times that I managed to actually button it up, surprise-surprise, the job's not done yet!  I had to manually tuck in a few inches worth of "love handles" (aka "fat" in my dictionary) into whatever invisible space left between the jeans and my bunched up skin.  Which by then would have started to show ugly crease lines from having been forced into something that's way too tight.

Huffin' and puffin', I would then look at the general result, shudder at the possibility of my jeans bursting at the seams, and then went on to worry about choosing a top that's loose enough to camouflage whatever blop left on the top of my waistline and yet still shapey enough to give the illusion that yes, I have a waist.

No belts were necessary.  There's no way the jeans would ever slide down, what with all those skin I've tucked in underneath the waistline.

Whoever said that the longer you wore your jeans, the less snug it would feel... YEAH, RIGHT!  If you keep wearing it for the next six months without washing it, maybe.  But I'm a mommy, so I don't have the luxury of not washing my jeans for the next six months.  My daughter likes to hug me and she's only come up to my waist.  I don't want her to catch any unwanted critters that might reside on my unwashed-for-six-months pair of jeans. 

So let me tell you what happens during the times I've managed to button up my jeans.  I would've thought the thing couldn't feel any tighter, right?  As soon as I sat down, I felt like I had just been punched in the guts.  Slowly but surely I could feel all those extra loose skin I had so painstakingly tucked in started to unravel and escape from the confines of my jeans.  I could even feel the spilling skin folding over and touch the metal coldness of my jean's button.  I would look down and see the slowly expanding and multiplying folds of skin underneath my loose top.  At which point I would then take a handful of Tums because I would be getting a serious case of heartburn from all that pressure on my tummy.

Multiply the whole experience above three folds once you drink a glass full of water, and five folds once you're through with appetizer.  By dessert, I would have to unbutton that damn button, which feels better than orgasm at that point, and breathe a long sigh of relief.  That feeling is short-lived, however, once I realize I've got to button the whole thing (the extra skin, the f*cking love handles, plus the appetizer, main course, and dessert) up again before getting up from my seat.  I tried walking around with my jeans unbuttoned once, but I ended up looking like I had grown a d*ck, which was not exactly the look I was going for--ever.

Despite owning a complete collection of jeans that encompasses three four different sizes, the whole thing that I described above?  Happened the last time I tried on the largest size I got.