Breathe. In and out.
That’s it. Just lie back and try not to let the little star spangles of excruciating pain cause a blackout. All the pain will be over and the end result will be worth it.
Now, wiggle a little to the left, and the right. That’s it. Just a little further. Grasp that zipper and PULL.
Yes, I said zipper — otherwise known as my nemesis after a long season of stretchy fabric leggings and pants.
Leggings are pants
There are people who say leggings are not pants. They are entitled to their opinion. I follow a higher definitive authority.
According to Merriam-Webster, pants are defined as “an outer garment covering each leg separately and usually extending from the waist to the ankle.” Sounds like leggings meet every definition of pants in my book.
Granted, I prefer them with a nice long shirt. Something to the knee is nice. I also like a tall boot. By the time I’m done dressing, you get to see about six inches or less of leggings. It’s not exactly scintillating stuff.
A popular meme says “anyone who doesn’t agree with leggings as pants can physically fight me. And I’m going to win because I have a full range of motion due to the fact that I am wearing leggings as pants.”
Still, despite my love of comfort and clothing that allows full range of motion, I’m never going to fight anything more than my urge to eat another cookie. I just hold the somewhat unpopular notion that leggings can look quite cute and even professional.
Struggle is real
Nonetheless, recently it just felt like time to put on some real pants. I went right to the pinnacle of achievement — blue jeans.
As a child of the 1980s, even when I was a wisp of a girl, I would lie back on the bed to zip up my Calvin Klein jeans because even though I weighed less than a strong breeze, the ability to bend over was not as important as the ability to wear skin-tight designer jeans.
Fast forward *cough, cough* years, and I found myself back in the same position, albeit with a little bit more of me to love stuffing into the jeans. I swear there used to be more fabric back then? Less stomach? Something was much different.
I also know that zippers used to be longer. Somehow I ended up with a ridiculous pair of denims with a zipper that was about the length of my thumbnail. What is this low-rise nonsense? How are you supposed to shove all the extra self in and zip it up tight with such a tiny little stub of a zipper?
I want high rise jeans that come up to somewhere just below my chin and cinch everything in with an industrial strength.
Thus goes my Leggings Survivor Denim Reentry Process (LSDRP). This is the process whereby a person (me) who has lived in leggings for nearly a year tries to wear denim jeans or virtually any pant with a zipper again. The results, my friends, are not pretty.
They are also not prone to deep breathing or any kind of bending.
