I choose from the vast selection of pants in my closet and wonder why, oh why I don't wear them more often. Confidently strutting out the door, I feel as light as an Alexa or an Elin.
But then, two hours into wearing those pantalones my positive attitude disappears and the painful fact resurfaces: Pants just aren't for me. They cut into the wrong bits and accentuate what is already getting too much air time. They give me camel toes or find their ways into my butt, where they reside happily ever after unless I tirelessly pluck and pluck and pluck. They are either a little too short or a little too long and they always stretch into an unsightly shape that does nothing for my rock hard* glutes. Every single time I bend or crouch I have to decide whether I will allow my ass crack to greet every stranger walking past me, or if I should pull those pants up. If I go with the latter (and apparently that's the more acceptable choice), I pull every thirty seconds. Hundreds if not thousands of times a day. Everywhere I go, I am already anxiously anticipating for them to slide back down my hips. Walking through malls, my thoughts evolve around when it's time to put those suckers in their rightful place again, wondering how soon is too soon to make readjustments gracefully by kicking one leg at a time and semi-jumping into them as though I was in a potato sack race. By this point there are people staring at me. Desperately trying to balance my handbag in one and some groceries in the other hand, I am forced to stop regularly to take pants adjustment breaks. And when I finally walk through my front door at night, I have calluses on my hands from all the pulling and friction burn on my hips. It's my personal hell. Just the thought of it makes me anxious. And even though I hate them, I naively and repeatedly give these awful but so smart looking assholes a chance. Time and time again. And the worst part is: I can never remember why I stopped the pants wearing business in the first place until it is already too late...
*glutes not rock hard
So here's my question for you: do you suffer from garment amnesia? Do you too buy and wear clothes you have supposedly sworn off completely? Do you, like me, stand in the change room of your favorite store, thinking to yourself: "Why on EARTH have I not invested in a pair of Wrangler jeans sooner?", to then ($ 200 later) find out that pants pulling and camel toes are still a side effect even with HIGH RISE pants. Why must my beloved high rise jeans turn on me like that? It's an outrage!
But the horror doesn't stop with pants or jeans or any other incarnation of the lower body stray jacket. There are long sleeved cotton shirts. And I am talking about those H&M cotton/elasthan tight long sleeved horror shirts that aren't thick enough to keep you from shivering but somehow still manage to turn your armpits into waterfalls. The discomfort around your shoulders is worse than that time your cool childless aunt got you ready for school and tightened up your backpack straps so much your chest inflated like a helium balloon and you flew off into the sky.
Long sleeved cotton shirts ruined me so much during my alternative puberty-rage fuelled teenage years (we wore them underneath stripey polo shirts with equally ill fitting sleeves), that I still hyperventilate whenever I try on a shirt, blazer or jacket that is cut too narrow for my monstrous Behemoth shoulders. Get it off me! GET! IT! OFF!
And yet...every now and again... I look at a long sleeved dress or shirt on ASOS and happily press the "pay now" button. Hopeless. Amnesia.
But it doesn't stop there either. Think elastic waistbands. Asymmetrical tops. High neck dresses. Everything JERSEY!
And almost immediately after having the idea for this post, I looked at a distressed denim pencil skirt. "It would make the perfect addition to my closet" I thought as I stared at it for an obscene amount of time. Obscene because it was ON a sales assistant, not a mannequin. I have a staring problem. But there was this feeling of discomfort in my gut every time I attempted to buy it. I couldn't pinpoint what made me feel hesitant about this skirt, so of course I ended up in the change room. As per official fitting room procedure, I paid little to no attention to the skirt or how it moved and felt on my body and instead pouted, took selfies, did supermodel poses and fixed my hair. But as expected and despite that weird feeling, I bought it.
And then I wore it and guess what - it rides up. Of course it does. I have solid quads the size of kebab rotisserie meat slabs and a in proportion tiny waist. How would that piece of cheap fabric not move upwards? It's science, d'uh! And that's not even the worst part. Not only am I now practicing the pull-down discipline every second step I take in this skirt, I have to be quick and vigorous because it comes with a back split. A split so perfectly centered I'm sure it would just blend in with my exposed butt crack after step three. This would be Ok with me, but there are kids around. And creepy dudes. So again I pull from sunrise to sundown and curse myself and swear with both hands lifted over my head that I will never, NEVER buy a midi skirt with a back split again.
 |
| Pulling and pulling.... |
Garment amnesia you guys. Garment fucking amnesia. I swear to God I have been in these situations before, stood in these change rooms before, tucked and plucked and pulled away until I was ready for capitulation and just went naked. Only I was in Austria and approximately 35 years** younger than I am now. And here goes to show that as a human being you absolutely do not automatically evolve into a better version of yourself. You can stay just as hopeless as a twenty-something as you were as a teen. And hey, that's ok as long as you can camouflage your weirdness to the point where society accepts you as one of their own. Trickery and quasi-control is what this adult life is about.
And on that note I am off spending money I don't have on clothes I don't really want to wear. :)
#learnfromyourmistakes
#thenforgetallaboutthem
#yolo
**dog years