Hello, everyone. Up until now, my scathing written complaints have been directed primarily toward more visually observable topics.
This week, I've chosen to write about something that may not be immediately irksome to anyone who is not me ... unless, like me, you have a long torso and also find it exhaustingly difficult to buy pants.
Yes, you read right: This week's topic is pants. If you know me at all, you'll know that I complain about pants a lot. About half of my daily complaints are in some way related to clothing. Belts and I don't get along well, either. I only own one, and I fight daily battles with it. These daily battles are necessary because, without a belt, my pants will fall off upon sitting down and standing up again. As long as I'm standing up, they're fine. As soon as I sit down, game over. I either have to grip them by the belt loops and hold them as I stand, or resign myself to wearing my least favorite human invention (besides low−rise pants): the belt.
But wait, wasn't this column about pants? I felt that the little belt segue was necessary before I even began to delve into the pants crisis. But now I'm delving, and there's no turning back.
It seems like every pair of jeans these days is marketed to either the super skinny (I'm looking at you, hipsters, and your abysmal invention, the "cigarette leg"), or girls who have larger waists and tiny thighs. Neither of these descriptions applies to me, and as a result I struggled through middle and high school wearing ill−fitting pants.
Over the past year or so, I came to realize that it was not my legs that were "wrong" but my torso — I have a longer torso than most pants retailers apparently manufacture for. As a result, low−rise jeans cut my hips right in the middle. It's not flattering, to put the situation lightly. If the rise of the jeans is just right, then the thighs are too small because the pants were built for a mannequin whose thighs and waist are both approximately the same size as each other and both roughly the width of a pencil: again, not the case with me. My waist is smaller than my thighs, so if the pants fit there, chances are they won't fit somewhere else. This never−ending circle of pants anger threatened to place me in the realm of A−line skirts forever, until something happened last November that flipped my situation upside down.
I found them — the perfect pair of pants. Well, not perfect, but pretty darn close. My legs actually looked normal! My hips were not cut in half at an awkward, hideous angle! I only needed a belt sometimes! There was only one problem: the price.
Yes, I do own a few pairs of these heavenly pants. I nearly had to part with my right arm in order to pay for them, but I've worked it out so that I sometimes get a pair as a gift during the holidays. Or I save up and foot the bill myself. It's a not−so−small small price to pay for having pants that fit — and to anyone for whom this article has hit home, feel free to email me, and I'll hook you up with the name of these wonderful pants.
I'm still working on the belt issue, though — maybe someday I will find the perfect belt, and then all of my clothes−related troubles will be over. But I think we all know that would be a true miracle.
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Kacey Rayder is a junior majoring in English. She can be reached at Kacey.Rayder@tufts.edu.
