Buying jeans

There are few things as daunting as buying jeans.

I don’t buy jeans frequently enough to buy the same kind twice. By the time I’m ready for a new pair of jeans, whatever I’ve been wearing is unavailable, out of style or both.

Of course there are sizes on jeans, but the sizes mean nothing. They are only intended to provide some sort of rough orientation. It would be like saying you know how to find your grandmother’s house in Texas because you know how to get to Texas. Chances are, you are nowhere close. But even if I find a size that fits, I will face difficulties.

Jeans with a waistband that comes anywhere near the waist are called “high-rise” jeans, though they used to be called “mom jeans” because “low-rise” jeans were popular for a long time. In order to keep selling new jeans, the low-rise got lower and lower until the zipper was approximately one inch long and its purpose was difficult to ascertain.

The obvious problem with this design is that if you try to hang something off the widest part of your body, there isn’t much incentive for it to stay there.

Wearing these jeans meant constantly pulling them up before they slipped any farther down. But for a long time these were about the only jeans you could buy, and so I went along with it and joined the legions of women hiking up their jeans as they walked down the street.

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