What you don’t know about skinny jeans, GenZ
It comes down to comfort. Really.
I remember being young. Ok, I’m not old but I remember being younger. I have a pretty vivid memory that I can’t stop thinking about now when people talk about the debate on limb width of pants.
It’s the year … don’t worry about the year. I’m getting ready to go to work as a server in a restaurant. Because that’s pretty much the only thing I have the skills to do at that point. I pull on a pair of black, wide-leg pants. They’re comfortable. I love them. I think they look good on my probably too-chubby legs. And somehow they make the lack of thigh gap feel hidden. But then it occurs to me: this is going to end. When I was really young my mom would lay down on the bed and do up her jeans with a pair of pliers. What the actual …?! I was terrified of the day when the thick cotton denim would come for my legs with a death grip.
It happened. I soon found myself wriggling into my jeans. Getting them on and then doing some sort of sumo squat to shimmy them into some wearable place. I also remember the crossover years of low-cut and skinny-leg *shudder*. But the plier-zipped style was first gen. As all things do, skinny jeans evolved. With time, more spandex found its way mixed into the cotton and the results were … comfortable. I soon came to realize, unlike my bra, I was not desperate to take off my pants as soon as I walked into the door. And, we all know, once the pants are off, we’re not leaving the house again (or maybe just me?). Were skinny jeans responsible for a more active social life? Actually maybe. Jeans actually came to be my “around the house” option. And there I lived in my bliss of comfort.
And then the headlines … skinny jeans are mom jeans now. I guess I’m old but not so old that I want to be swept away by new trends and relegated to the “mom jean" category.
So I go online because, pandemic. I buy a pair of high waisted, loose in the leg jeans. They promise to make my butt look good … that’s a whole other post about my lacklustre butt. I anxiously await the arrival of my leap into the new style. I mean, I used to love the extra leg room.
Anyway, I wait some more. Because pandemic.
They arrive! I rush to put them on. They fit. I mean, they’re the right size. But as I “move" around my apartment, I get some very vivid flashbacks…. These jeans are rearranging my internal organs. I feel like I’m wearing some prototype jeans from the 1800s built for durability. But, to be honest, I don’t do hard labour in my jeans. Really truly, I mostly sit.
“What did I do before?” I ask myself. “Oh yeah! I get them wet and then wear them around the house to get them into a good shape". An afternoon of uncomfortable wetness ensues. It helps. A bit. I keep wearing them and my organs keep trying to find new places of rest.
What has happened here? The spandex that got me into those skinny jeans, that made them kind of like leggings, that made them actually comfortable? It’s gone.
It’s gone and I miss it. But then, I’ve lived through a couple of decades that offers me the chance to miss a style like this. I don’t want to tell people younger than me what to wear or how to feel comfortable. I only truly wish you the joy of wearing your jeans all day, of looking good all day, and really, honestly, feeling comfortable the whole time too.
