What not to wear

I'm going to do it. I'm going to get rid of all the jeans I shouldn't be wearing. You ladies know what I'm talking about -- the jeans that are a little too tight the first day out of the wash but usually loosen up the second day. The ones that are a little too short, but you solve that by not looking down.

As a middle-aged white female, supposedly an adult, I probably shouldn't be wearing jeans all the time anyway. Unfortunately, I really can't help it. Firstly, I'm a geek in a job that does sometimes include crawling around of the floor under desks. Secondly, I am, um, fashion disabled and can't really imagine (or remember) wearing anything else. Thirdly, wearing jeans negates the need for certain figure supporting/enhancing products which I surely would need to get familiar with if I chose a fabric any less... supportive than denim.

Complicating this is that when it comes to clothing, I am cheap. Really cheap. I get bowel spasms if I have to pay more than $30 for a pair of jeans. So... I buy my jeans at a certain unnamed discount mega-retailer I will call 'WMart'. And can I say convenient? I toss 'em in the cart right along with the peanut butter and Prilosec during my lunch-hour-grocery-shopping runs.

Now many of the jeans at WMart include some percentage of Spandex. Spandex is a wonderfully forgiving miracle fabric, to be sure. Hell, one might even think the more Spandex, the better! I certainly did, until I discovered that as you gain weight, those ever-accommodating stretchy jeans obligingly grow along with you, until you end up wearing pants that you should never, ever be wearing, even if they still 'fit', technically.

And then there's the bane of every women over the age of 40: Mom jeans. I don't want pants with a waistband up around my ribcage and tapered legs, but when one is built a... certain way and shops at a certain store, these days often the only alternative is to buy pants with a rise barely adequate to cover the lady parts, resulting in spillage of generous quantities of under-toned and over-fed middle-aged flesh.

Yum.

Throwing out those last few pairs of "Oh no she di'nt" jeans will leave me with only two (!) pairs of jeans suitable for work, three if I keep the black ones that just plain fit weird. But, for the sake of my co-workers and humanity in general, it's got to be done. Trust me, it's for the best.

This might even call for a shopping trip to a real live department store. Did I mention that I hate shopping? I recommend you stay away from the mall for the next few weeks.