Revelation in the Gap dressing room
This is the fifth in an occasional series.
When all my pants were too big, I decided I would wait until fall to buy new ones because I would just wear skirts all summer. The flaw in this plan is that it's freezing in my office (something that was not true last summer), so even when it's 100 outside, I'm wearing jeans and socks and shoes to work. (This is also why I gave up my hunt for good sandals. If I'm only wearing them for a few hours on weekends, I can wear the cheap, mildly uncomfortable ones.)
I can no longer stand my pants. All my jeans are one size too big, and my khaki-style pants (which I have to wear once a week because I don't own quite enough jeans) are two sizes too big. I hate them all. And, of course, Penney's no longer carries either pant, so I can't just replace them with the same thing in a different size (which is how I prefer to shop).
My strategy, the last couple of times I've been in Penney's, was to find any pants in my size in a fabric I didn't hate and try them on. Last time I was there, I tried on a pair of pants, looked at myself in the mirror and thought, "Oh, yeah, I've tried these on again." They're actually extremely comfortable, but I don't like the style. Between the cut and the vertical pinstripes, they make my legs look weirdly skinny.
I've been reading all sorts of blogs recently (possibly more on that later), and one of them was raving about Gap jeans, so I thought I'd go try them on and see if they were worth it. The second pair I tried on had the same weird skinny effect on my legs. Then I put on my own jeans, and they didn't look that different.
Here's my revelation: When I look at myself in the mirror, I'm usually only looking at my top half. If I'm using the long mirror in my closet to look at the top and bottom halves of myself, I'm usually wearing belly dance clothes, which means harem pants or a large skirt.
It's not the clothes; it's my body.
This, of course, shot my concentration all to hell, and even though I tried on a few more pair of jeans, I have no idea which styles would work for me. (This is hard to determine anyway because they don't carry petites in store, which means the space for the hips hits below my hips and looks weird.) Once I thought about it, I realized that I'd actually noticed this in the context of the pool. Last summer, I would swim laps until I was tired, backfloat for a bit, then swim more laps until I was tired, and then get out. This summer, I'm just swimming laps and then getting out of the pool, but I still like a little relaxation in the water after my laps. I no longer float. Or rather, only the top half of me floats. My legs just slowly sink into the water. Presumably this is because muscle is more dense than fat, and a lot of the fat in my legs has been converted to muscle. So yay to muscle, but boo to not being able to float anymore.
When all my pants were too big, I decided I would wait until fall to buy new ones because I would just wear skirts all summer. The flaw in this plan is that it's freezing in my office (something that was not true last summer), so even when it's 100 outside, I'm wearing jeans and socks and shoes to work. (This is also why I gave up my hunt for good sandals. If I'm only wearing them for a few hours on weekends, I can wear the cheap, mildly uncomfortable ones.)
I can no longer stand my pants. All my jeans are one size too big, and my khaki-style pants (which I have to wear once a week because I don't own quite enough jeans) are two sizes too big. I hate them all. And, of course, Penney's no longer carries either pant, so I can't just replace them with the same thing in a different size (which is how I prefer to shop).
My strategy, the last couple of times I've been in Penney's, was to find any pants in my size in a fabric I didn't hate and try them on. Last time I was there, I tried on a pair of pants, looked at myself in the mirror and thought, "Oh, yeah, I've tried these on again." They're actually extremely comfortable, but I don't like the style. Between the cut and the vertical pinstripes, they make my legs look weirdly skinny.
I've been reading all sorts of blogs recently (possibly more on that later), and one of them was raving about Gap jeans, so I thought I'd go try them on and see if they were worth it. The second pair I tried on had the same weird skinny effect on my legs. Then I put on my own jeans, and they didn't look that different.
Here's my revelation: When I look at myself in the mirror, I'm usually only looking at my top half. If I'm using the long mirror in my closet to look at the top and bottom halves of myself, I'm usually wearing belly dance clothes, which means harem pants or a large skirt.
It's not the clothes; it's my body.
This, of course, shot my concentration all to hell, and even though I tried on a few more pair of jeans, I have no idea which styles would work for me. (This is hard to determine anyway because they don't carry petites in store, which means the space for the hips hits below my hips and looks weird.) Once I thought about it, I realized that I'd actually noticed this in the context of the pool. Last summer, I would swim laps until I was tired, backfloat for a bit, then swim more laps until I was tired, and then get out. This summer, I'm just swimming laps and then getting out of the pool, but I still like a little relaxation in the water after my laps. I no longer float. Or rather, only the top half of me floats. My legs just slowly sink into the water. Presumably this is because muscle is more dense than fat, and a lot of the fat in my legs has been converted to muscle. So yay to muscle, but boo to not being able to float anymore.