Stretching the Imagination (If Nothing Else)

Nothing comes between me and my new premium denim. Even if it wanted to. Nothing.

I have always believed that one should practice what she preaches, and so if I am going to encourage customers to go down a size or two in their new overpriced premium denims, I am going to follow the sage advice of the premium denim mavens. They should feel tight, just short of painful. Kind of like yoga. How Zen.

The other day, as I immersed myself in sales training and tried on every kind of jean sold in the store, I settled on a pair of crops -- primarily because they contained the word "Twiggy" in the label. A yoga aficionado in my own right, I know what discomfort just short of pain is supposed to feel like; we refer to it as "going to your edge." I went down, and down again, in sizes, until I felt fairly certain any tighter a squeeze would result in a raging camel toe (not necessarily painful for me so much as anyone looking at me) and a complete cessation of breath (again, not necessarily painful for me, since I'd end up unconscious, but here I was considering the potential heartache of my children).

Gazing in the three-way mirror and stretching myself into my best imitation of a teenaged Brooke Shields (no wonder her head was so large and her eyebrows were so bushy; no room for excess fat or, um, anything in those Calvins -- it all had to go somewhere), I thought about how far we have come since the eighties. At least I didn't have to lie down to get the jeans on, and there was the sincere, scientifically proven promise that, within an hour, the Lycra infused denim would stretch. Ah, Brooke. If only we had been so progressive back then you might have stuck it out, not escaped to the wilds of Princeton just so you could wear sweats.

Anyway, off I went yesterday in my Twiggy crops, relying on time spent in traffic to provide me with enough give so I could actually eat something more than a sprig of parsley when I arrived at dinner. But, like the traffic, my new premium denims were at a stand still. No matter what I did -- stick one leg out the window, toss the other up on the dashboard, engage in a series of seated pelvic thrusts (much to the delight, or, more likely, revulsion, of the guy staring over at me from the car in the next lane), even stick my substantially stuffed wallet down my pants, the material clung to me for dear life. I could feel the muffin top rising. The pressure continued to mount. My phone shot out of my back pocket. My nose began to look fat, and I could swear my eyebrows were filling in. Note to self -- get a bikini wax.

I raced through dinner, praying the strain on the premium denim wouldn't cause it to explode off me. By the time I hit the road to head home, the traffic was moving and so were my new jeans, if only because I had unzipped them fully and allowed my aching belly to hang out and rest on my lap, the way it's supposed to.

Premium denim may, indeed, stretch, but at fifty-two, I don't have the time or patience to wait, and, let me tell you, stuck in traffic and my new pants, I was about as close to the edge as I'd ever want to be. This is probably a well kept secret, but sweat pants stretch as well, and a lot faster. All you need to do is loosen the drawstring.

Yep, we've come a long way, baby, since the eighties.