Pants.

I spent a lot of time in the car over the holiday weekend, driving and being driven.

 (I'll take that over Mark's experience -- he had a whirlwind business trip to London that finished the day before Thanksgiving.  OK, well, I wouldn't mind the London part, but I would have minded the "business" and "whirlwind" parts.)

When I was 45 pounds heavier it used to make me feel bad to spend a lot of time in the car, because after an hour or two my jeans started to pull at my hips and thigh and butt uncomfortably.  Making creases in the flesh:  not painful or anything, just tight here and pinched there.  I would shift my body, push my feet against the floor and straighten up, in the guise of stretching my back, and it would stop feeling tight in one place but it would start feeling tight another.  All those hours of driving, and it was a constant and niggling reminder that I was a fat person.  After a while I would start to wonder:  Does this feel worse than last time?  Maybe I'm gaining weight, even.  

I suppose I could have stopped wearing jeans and switched to flowy loose skirts or something.  I didn't want to.  Part of me believed that the constant pinching, pulling, tight-across-the-thigh feeling was something that kept me from getting even fatter, because it kept me miserably reminded of how fat I was already.

+ + +

And then I lost weight and I discovered something:

Jeans don't pull and pinch slightly and make creases in the flesh and get uncomfortable on long car trips because you're fat.  

Jeans pull and pinch slightly and get uncomfortable on long car trips because they are jeans.

(At least the ones I buy do.  I don't know if the super relaxed fit, elastic waist, Grandma Jeans don't, or if hyper-expensive pre-broken-in designer jeans don't.  I can only speak for my Levi's.)

On a long car trip now, exactly the same sensations happen.  Even though I am not at all a fat person anymore.

But you want to know something crazy?

It still makes me feel bad.  I spent so many years thinking that the feeling of wearing jeans equals the feeling of having put on too much weight, that nowadays, when I wear jeans, I walk around (or more likely sit around) feeling vaguely shameful and certain that I ate too much for lunch.

I think I understand a little bit the concept of anorexia:  how a woefully thin girl can look in the mirror and see fat that needs to be eliminated.  I never did quite get that.  But I experience a sort of similar thing in a tactile sense:  I, not woefully thin but perfectly normal, can sit in a chair and feel jeans that are "bursting at the seams" and start thinking maybe I should skip dinner.

I know better, but that doesn't make it all go away.

Comments

[Jennifer]

I think the trick to good fitting jeans is the lycra content. If you find ones that have more stretch, they are much more comfortable. I personally like the ones at AT Loft and regular AT. I'm a big fan of the skinny jean because contrary to popular belief, the more stream lined fit makes people look slimmer. I learned that on "What not to Wear".

[MelanieB]

I agree about the higher lycra content. I have a pair of jeans from Old Navy that are pretty stretchy and pretty comfortable. They are about five years old, though, so I wouldn't assume I could buy the same thing now.

?Although the most comfortable jeans I ever owned were a pair of old broken-in Gap jeans that I bought at the Salvation Army back when I was in college. I wore them until they literally fell apart because they were beyond comfortable.

[Christy P]

I am consistently dismayed by the ever-changing landscape of clothing. As soon as I find something I like well enough to buy again it changes and isn't the same anymore. Sigh.

[bearing]

Yeah, I had some favorites from pre-2008 that I have been pining for. Sahalie used to sell fleece overalls. I lived in them in the winter. And I had this pair of (ostensibly maternity) pants, stretchy gaucho-type capris, that I wore CONSTANTLY. Nothing like them is anywhere to be found. I saved them in case of future pregnancy.