Who Wears the Pants in Nezu's House?
Oct. 18th, 2009 05:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nezukoJeans. The American national dress. Jeans have transformed the color blue from a primary into a neutral that goes with everything. Jeans have migrated from the gold mines and cattle drives of the Old West, through Dust Bowl cotton fields and the fruited plains and amber waves of grain of the heartland, gone to college with beatniks and hippies, been the uniform of Silicon Valley and the computer revolution, and made it all the way into Wall Street board rooms. When conservators cleaned the giant American flag at the Smithsonian, the original Star-Spangled Banner that inspired Francis Scott Key to pen our national anthem, they found it contaminated with dust and lint including blue cotton fibers, presumed to have come from the blue jeans worn by many of the over five million annual visitors to the museum.
I remember the first pair of real jeans I had when I was four, and the fantastic white leather belt with a two-pronged buckle that went with them. It was 1971, and I was stylin! It's safe to say I have worn jeans my entire life. I feel comfortable in them, ready for anything. I feel at home in them. I've sledded in jeans, climbed Mt. Lassen in jeans, watched an Atlantic sunrise and a Pacific sunset in jeans. Done almost all my writing in jeans. Fallen in and out of love while wearing jeans. Made love while wearing jeans. When I am wearing jeans, I am myself.
But for most of my adult life, jeans and I have had a sort of awkward little not-so-secret secret: they didn't fit. The rise was always too long, so the crotch hung halfway down my thighs. The hips and ass had handfuls of extra fabric that flapped and flared, made me look ten or more pounds heavier, and slovenly to boot. I had to roll the waistband over to get them to even be somewhat reasonable.
Other pants and slacks were even worse. All the same problems as with jeans, but on khakis or dress pants the poor fit was even more noticeable. I gave up shopping for any tailored pants long, long ago. The closest I could get to a decent fit was to buy women's petites, but I'm 5'7" with reasonably long legs: the petites were ankle-clingers, and they still had saggy extra yardage in the hips and thighs. Trendy low-rise jeans helped a little, but not enough.
But then I had an epiphany. I took my measurements, and discovered my hips are only slightly wider than my waist. And my waist is very, very low. I am, in fact, built like a guy. Women's jeans are cut for a typical woman's figure - narrow, high waist, broad hips and so on. Especially jeans in fat-girl sizes. For pear-shaped women, this works great. But for someone like me, with broad shoulders and narrow hips, they are kind of a disaster. So I decided to try a pair of guys' jeans. Alas, I am just over the threshold for what sizes most stores carry. I'm just slightly into the "big and tall" category. But trying on the one-size-too-small jeans told me a lot. So I mail-ordered.
Levi's 501 original, men's, low-rise, button fly, straight-leg jeans are the best things ever! I have, for the first time in decades, jeans that truly fit! Well almost fit, because in truth I need a waist size they just don't make, so I need a belt to keep them up. But with a belt (and it's a stylin' brown and black braided leather belt that my friend JB helped me pick out yesterday) they fit like they were tailored for me. They fit so well people noticed and commented on them at church today. I got asked if I'd had them custom hemmed (nope, I'm lucky, I actually have a thirty-inch inseam.) I got told how great I looked, and that my jeans fit me really well. Heh.
I actually experimented in my order from Levi's. The dark stonewash 501's fit the best. The black 501's are a little looser (something I've noticed with black jeans before.) I also got a pair of 505's which purport to be the zip-fly counterpart to 501's, but they are a little longer in the rise and don't fit quite so perfectly. And I got a pair of Levi's women's 590's supposedly cut for women with a fuller waist. They're um... Yeah. No. Close, but not close enough. So I'll be sending back the 590's and maybe the 505's, and ordering more 501's. My old jeans, meanwhile, are going to Goodwill. And I never have to sing the blues about my jeans again!
I remember the first pair of real jeans I had when I was four, and the fantastic white leather belt with a two-pronged buckle that went with them. It was 1971, and I was stylin! It's safe to say I have worn jeans my entire life. I feel comfortable in them, ready for anything. I feel at home in them. I've sledded in jeans, climbed Mt. Lassen in jeans, watched an Atlantic sunrise and a Pacific sunset in jeans. Done almost all my writing in jeans. Fallen in and out of love while wearing jeans. Made love while wearing jeans. When I am wearing jeans, I am myself.
But for most of my adult life, jeans and I have had a sort of awkward little not-so-secret secret: they didn't fit. The rise was always too long, so the crotch hung halfway down my thighs. The hips and ass had handfuls of extra fabric that flapped and flared, made me look ten or more pounds heavier, and slovenly to boot. I had to roll the waistband over to get them to even be somewhat reasonable.
Other pants and slacks were even worse. All the same problems as with jeans, but on khakis or dress pants the poor fit was even more noticeable. I gave up shopping for any tailored pants long, long ago. The closest I could get to a decent fit was to buy women's petites, but I'm 5'7" with reasonably long legs: the petites were ankle-clingers, and they still had saggy extra yardage in the hips and thighs. Trendy low-rise jeans helped a little, but not enough.
But then I had an epiphany. I took my measurements, and discovered my hips are only slightly wider than my waist. And my waist is very, very low. I am, in fact, built like a guy. Women's jeans are cut for a typical woman's figure - narrow, high waist, broad hips and so on. Especially jeans in fat-girl sizes. For pear-shaped women, this works great. But for someone like me, with broad shoulders and narrow hips, they are kind of a disaster. So I decided to try a pair of guys' jeans. Alas, I am just over the threshold for what sizes most stores carry. I'm just slightly into the "big and tall" category. But trying on the one-size-too-small jeans told me a lot. So I mail-ordered.
Levi's 501 original, men's, low-rise, button fly, straight-leg jeans are the best things ever! I have, for the first time in decades, jeans that truly fit! Well almost fit, because in truth I need a waist size they just don't make, so I need a belt to keep them up. But with a belt (and it's a stylin' brown and black braided leather belt that my friend JB helped me pick out yesterday) they fit like they were tailored for me. They fit so well people noticed and commented on them at church today. I got asked if I'd had them custom hemmed (nope, I'm lucky, I actually have a thirty-inch inseam.) I got told how great I looked, and that my jeans fit me really well. Heh.
I actually experimented in my order from Levi's. The dark stonewash 501's fit the best. The black 501's are a little looser (something I've noticed with black jeans before.) I also got a pair of 505's which purport to be the zip-fly counterpart to 501's, but they are a little longer in the rise and don't fit quite so perfectly. And I got a pair of Levi's women's 590's supposedly cut for women with a fuller waist. They're um... Yeah. No. Close, but not close enough. So I'll be sending back the 590's and maybe the 505's, and ordering more 501's. My old jeans, meanwhile, are going to Goodwill. And I never have to sing the blues about my jeans again!
