skinny jeans

I think every woman has a pair of these somewhere in the recesses of their closet. You know, the jeans that are one or several sizes smaller than everything else you wear on a daily basis, the ones you wish you could fit into even if they are out of style now, the ones you keep around as a motivator for losing weight but sometimes end up accusing you silently from their designated spot in the dresser drawer? Okay, maybe your jeans don't communicate with you the same way mine do, but nevertheless, skinny jeans are an almost universal female experience.

Saturday night, I tried on my skinny jeans on a whim. They fit. They FIT.

I was going to wear them yesterday morning to church, but I chickened out: they are "slim leg" jeans, and while they do fit (no mushroom-top waist bulging out), they're just a little too tight in the butt to wear to, say, lead worship, which is what I do every Sunday morning. Out on the town with the girls would be a different story. I think Jason was looking forward to showing me off in the skinny jeans (which have not fit for over 4 years) - I walked into the sanctuary where he was setting up, and he looked all disappointed and said, "You didn't wear the skinny jeans!" I still wore jeans that I haven't worn in several years also, but they were a little looser, a little less Christina Aguilera.

It occurred to me that now I'm going to have to buy an even smaller pair of jeans to keep that universal female experience of the Skinny Jeans That Just Won't Fit... in a size I may have seen briefly when I was 11 or 12 years old. It's a strange, electrifying experience to be shrinking, indeed. More on that later.