Recently I had a date to meet a friend for an afternoon of lunch and shopping. I wore jeans with a silk shirt, complemented by a very nice purse and shoes, as well as jewelry. I thought I looked quite nice.
When we met, my friend looked at me and said, “Miriam, what is wrong with you?” I didn’t understand and asked what was wrong with my outfit. She said that I looked great except that my pants were obviously the wrong size—they were too big. I was contrite and explained that I was a recovering fatty.
An alcoholic never says she used to be an alcoholic. She is always “recovering” because she knows that she’s one drink away from being one again.
In the same way, I feel as if I’m but one chocolate chip cookie away from being fat again. As a recovering fatty, this has been a life-long problem for me. Even though I lost a huge amount of weight and have kept it off for life, at 88 lbs., I still have trouble realizing I’m thin.
For some reason this is a particularly big problem when I buy jeans. When I try on a size 0 or 2, they are snug, which is how they are supposed to be, but I panic, thinking that they’re snug because I’m fat. So I buy size 4 or worse, size 6 instead. At the outset they are way too baggy, so you can imagine after I’ve worn them a few times, and they become even more roomy. But I do try to break this habit.
Every time I go shopping for jeans I tell myself that this time I will buy the proper size. Unfortunately, each time I end up buying them too big.
For some reason I don’t have this problem with dressier pants or any other clothing. I know to look for the smallest size I can find. There’s something about denim jeans that brings out the fat instinct. I’ve tried on jeans in stores where the saleswoman actually pleaded with me not to take a larger size. “You don’t understand. They’re supposed to be snug.”
But I always take a larger size and then regret it after I’ve worn them a few times. Maybe one day I'll learn. I have two pairs of denim jeans at home right now and neither really fits properly. One is a size 4 that I could easily make pleats in, they’re so baggy and the other is a size 3 that fit a little better but are still too big.
I suppose it’s better to be this way than a size 14 trying to fit into a size 4, which I see so often in the street. But I’m publicly making a vow to try to buy jeans that fit.
Miriam Silverberg is a freelance journalist and owner of Miriam Silverberg Associates, a boutique publicity firm in Manhattan. She may be reached at [email protected]
(*Woman in jeans photo via Shutterstock)
Friends Read Free