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It is just me, or —
"Yes, it's just you. Stop trying to conflate your own neurotic trivia with some general point about society."
Oh. Well. I had no idea you felt that way.
But hear me out: Is it just me and everyone else who thinks like me, or have pants become … kinder? Less judgmental?
When I was a kid, jeans came in two sizes: Normal, and Husky. The latter were for the chubby kids, and had all the style and comfort of a burlap sack of seed.
Now the jeans options are kaleidoscopic. There's Boot Cut for those who base their pant choice around their footwear.
Slim for people who have the characteristic nonexistent keister of the bony Nordic.
Skinny for those people who are genetically predisposed to have the physique of a sheet of cardboard.
Regular for everyone else.
There also are signs on the jean displays that aim to describe the essential differences of the fits.
"Athletic Cut: Roomy in the leg, generous in the shin, merciless in the groin, vindictive in the seat, relaxed in the waist."
It sounds like you've been kidnapped by a gang that will try various psychological methods to find out where the secret documents were hidden.
What drives our choices? Your waist size, yes, but it's a combination of what you think it is, what you know it was, and what you fear it will be.
We all have a fixed size in our heads, a baseline number for the waist. Mine is 28, because I am short. I have to stand on tiptoe to go through a turnstile. I can wear a 28 Slim, if I have spent a fortnight in a monastery on a diet of water and celery; if I try on a 28 Skinny in the dressing room, all circulation to my lower limbs cuts off so quickly that gangrene sets in.
A 28 Regular fits fine at one store. Hey, great, I haven't gained weight! Try on 28Rs at another store (which has a different brand that's roomy in the ankle, generous in the knee, contemptuous in the hips and indifferently bemused in the seat) and the button doesn't come within an inch of the button hole.
A 28 Regular at a different store feels like billowing clown pants.
It's been a lifelong struggle, and by struggle I mean not a struggle at all in any real sense of the word. It's been an annoyance.
Until recently. I recently tried on a pair of pants and the waistband expanded, just slightly. An almost imperceptible act of forgiveness, as if it had a hint of elastic, or spandex.
I tried another store, a different brand, same thing.
The only possible explanation: They've spliced sweatpants' DNA into jeans. It's as if the entire jeans industry decided to pretend no one gained any weight last year, and introduced this beneficent stretchiness without fanfare.
I'm not sure how I feel about this, aside from loving it completely. You always have that one pair of jeans that exists as a rebuke, or a reward. An ideal to which one may strive, or shrink away from, abashed by your own indulgence. A pair you hate to wash because you might have to spray your legs with silicone to get them on, a pair you like after a few days because they're no longer dryer-tight, and feel a bit loose. Why, I think I might have lost a little.
We can accept that one size means different things in different jeans in different stores, but if your baseline pair now contains the forgiveness of elastic, there's no reason not to have more ice cream.
Or maybe that's just me.
james.lileks@startribune.com • Twitter: @Lileks •
