Mine are a black pair, meant for wearing to church and maybe funerals, God forbid. They’re a purchase I know I shouldn’t make so quick, a naive ‘they look like they’ll fit’ buy in the hope that I’m still the exact same size I was the last time I went shopping combined with the assumption that, somehow, the straight cut will fit my curves the way it’s meant to.
I buy them to replace a similar pair that, while still slide up my thighs quite comfortably, have faded to not-quite-black from years of wash and wear.
I’ve never been the type to forget about clothes, leave them hanging at the back of my wardrobe, tags still on, but the black pants are abandoned, left in the bottom of a plastic bag for weeks. Something more interesting, more exciting would have been tried on and modelled around the house for my (poor) family, but not these black pants. No.
They’re too boring and just necessity, so they’re forgotten about – until I need a pair of formal pants for a 21st birthday party.
Dug out in the flurry of getting ready, the pants part with their tag before they can even be tried on and by the time they’re just above my knees, I realise we’re going to have a problem.
They don’t fit, and no amount of jumping, tugging and wiggling will make them.
And that is the moment I realise how royally screwed I am.
They say every woman owns a pair of these mystical pants, sent to a land of hopes and dreams where thighs are thinner, bums are tighter and bellies don’t bulge. It’s a time and place where jeans don’t require a sucking in of gut to fit into and belt buckles don’t cause permanent scarring.
It’s a nice place.
After spending many, many years in a land where ill-fitting pants are fingered with fondness, greeted with a sigh, a whisper of “one day”, a murmur of “maybe someday soon”, I’ve been introduced to the land of proverbial milk and honey where pants fit the way they should.
It’s a Sunday morning and I have no idea what to wear, but as a joke – mostly to laugh at my own pain – I grab the very same black pants and try them on with a “what could it hurt?”
I know exactly what it can hurt (my ego, my self-esteem, my whole damn day), but surprisingly, this time, it doesn’t.
Much more to my surprise than anyone else’s, the infamous black pants slip on and up and sit, albeit snugly, around my beloved booty.
I feel validated, I feel liberated and I feel infinitely bad ass.
But… Just between me and you?
I think I’ll be keeping my ‘Sisterhood of the Ill-Fitting Pants’ membership card.
Just in case.
– cindy@namibian.com.na; @SugaryOblivion on Twitter and Instagram; ‘Sugary Oblivion’ on Facebook.
