Friday, September 14, 2012

On the Topic of Mom Jeans

Now that I am several sizes smaller than I was in May, I have gone shopping in my own closet and unearthed a couple of slimmer-days outfits.

What?  You get rid of stuff when you outgrow it?

Not me, boy-o.  I think I have more frugality running through my veins than blood.  I often battle my tendency to pinch pennies until they weep.  Poor coppery Abraham Lincoln. 

Anyway, I fight my frugality because I've been burned when I buy the cheapest version of whatever I need.  While it can be true that a product's expense is mainly in its packaging (or bloated marketing budget), sometimes you really only get what you pay for.  So, don't be surprised when that four-dollar sweater from Forever 21 unravels when you simply think about washing it.

Last weekend, I found a couple of pairs of jeans lurking under my cherished stack of mix tapes.*  These are jeans on which I dropped a fair amount of coin, which is why I still have them.  You don't just pitch Calvin Klein jeans, you know?  Nothing gets between me and my Calvins.  Well, nothing besides thirty-five pounds.

"Whoo-hoo!" I thought.  "I can wear jeans from when I was a teenager!"

I slipped on the jeans, buttoning them up with no trouble.  In FACT, they might actually be a little big, which is also kind of exciting. Ah, afterglow. Every skipped cookie is totally worth it. 

(Until a co-worker brings in a platter of cookies and puts them on the kitchen counter DIRECTLY across from your office. At that point, you question your dedication, and you start leaving notes like 'SABOTEUR!" on said co-worker's cubicle. And then you settle on half a cookie.)

At work, though, I noticed something.  There's a full-length mirror in the ladies room.  I glanced at myself.  Herm.  These jeans, which I wore as a teenager, are now not-so-stylish.  Kind of dowdy, actually. Wait. (I peer closer.) Oh God, they are MOM jeans!  The kind of jeans that ride way too high on your waist, have huge pockets, and really wide legs.

How can this be?  I've never knowingly purchased a pair of Mom-jeans.  And then, epiphany!  They didn't start out as Mom jeans.  Would Calvin Klein make Mom jeans?  NO!  Style has changed, evolved.  I wore these during the Grunge Era, where sexy meant hiding yourself in a plaid tent and wearing combat boots.  What was once youthful and chic is now de rigueur for mothers, which, makes it categorically un-hip.  Like using the word 'hip'.

So, yeah, I think it's time for me to give up the old clothes and procure some replacements manufactured in this century.

*I was going to write cassingles, but figured it would befuddle everyone born after 1988.

 

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