I hate to obsess over this but isn’t that kind of the point when you name an article of clothing after something women obsess over above all other obsessions?
The marketing wizards who came up with the “skinny” jean have a lot to be proud of. They have sold millions of jeans to millions of women who for whatever reason think if they wear a pant labelled “skinny” it will in fact make them lose weight, make them appear skinny or help in their quest to become skinny.
It has never bothered me because I too enjoyed the idea of the skinny jean and tipped my hat to the people who coined the term. So simple, so obvious and yet they’re a fairly new product. It must be tough to come up with a new name for “blue, denim pant.”
I even considered purchasing a pair of skinny jeans and honestly liked the ample amount of stretch, the comfortable, relaxed, breezy, just-came-from-the-riding-stable quality I think we can agree is appealing to the other mothers pretending to be equestrians.
I then started to despise the skinny jean much like the yoga pant for what it represented. Women who had never taken a yoga class in their lives wearing yoga pants to champagne receptions, pool parties, Christenings and funerals because they were trendy, expensive and appealed to other women. My advice on yoga pants is wear them to be comfortable, wear them around the house when cleaning, watching a movie, reading a great book by the fire or oh, I can’t believe I almost forgot this one, to exercise in.
My eight year old came home from school last week and while tugging on her baggy jeans that resemble every pair of loose fitting pants she owns announced, “Mommy, you have to buy me skinny jeans, my legs are fat” and I froze.
I hadn’t prepared myself for a child starting grade three to suggest she was fat or that she needed jeans to make her skinny, pin-pointing a specific body part and knocking her self image, self worth and years of attempted confidence building in the process.
Hanna was calling her legs fat when what she really meant was her jeans were baggy. Her legs are no more than a narrow femur bone with a thin layer of skin encasing them, nothing more. But the label “skinny” jean has created something more sinister than a woman carrying an extra ten pounds feeling better about herself when wearing a pant that has a little give and narrows toward the ankle. A look that’s tough to pull off if you’ve eaten two, large Fruit ‘N Nut bars and three banana/chocolate chip muffins even if they are the miniature ones. Someone should invent the “Salt Flare” jean. Those I would buy stock in.
The word “skinny” is clouding things for young, impressionable girls and it’s crossing boundaries that as a mother of three daughters, I find a) scary and b) unacceptable.
“You have to buy me skinny jeans, my legs are fat.” What? And yet, I had read so far into her comment without looking at her tugging at the material hanging from her twigs I hadn’t realized she too was referencing the pants themselves and not the leg beneath.
Even wearing skinny jeans she could still technically be referred to as “droopy drawers.” She’s tiny, regardless of denim-style. It would take two of her, double the thickness to even utilize the stretch portion of the fabric. They would be hanging off of her. She’s swimming in skinny and doesn’t understand the ramifications of this simple word.
I thought “fat” was the word we were supposed to fear. I’ve always cringed when hearing people being described as “fat.” I even found myself improvising when reading books to my girls as babies if the alliterative text read “five fat frogs” I would simply say, “five happy frogs,” or “five green frogs” or “five hoppity, ribbity, fly eating frogs,” but always avoided “fat.” I guess I didn’t want them thinking it was a word we should use to describe any living thing, even if it was a frog.
If she had said, “Mom, my pants are all too loose, can you get me something a little more fitted in the leg?” I would have understood, though, I might have questioned why she was spending energy on the way her pants hung and completely overlooking the fact that she hadn’t run a comb through her hair in a week.
This parenting thing is really about learning on the job but this one has me worried. Luckily, I’ve got a couple of skinny lattes to keep me alert today.
