I know that I’ve made countless snide teasing remarks regarding Main Street and the skinny-jean clad hipsters, and I’ve always, ALWAYS vowed I would never succumb to the mass delusional hysteria that is the extremely tapered skinny jean. Part of  the (entire) reason for this is, unless you are 6’2 & 107 lbs, skinny jeans just look well – BAD. Even on skinny people.

But then the boots came into my life. The gorgeous, work of art, make me drool, incredibly tall and sexy John Fluevog boots. Although I am a fan of shoes in general, I don’t usually get so hot and bothered over them. But with these, it was love at first sight, uncontrollable, insatiable, obsessive love… it was dangerous love.

Now, I’m a tall girl. I often tower over a lot of people in line-standing situations (guys included). So pair one 5’10ish girl with 2.5″ giant boots, and watch out! It’s like attack of the 50ft woman all over again.

But there was a problem looming with the boots. Try as I might, I could not force my regular boot-cut jeans into them without a billowing cloud of unsightly denim seeping out the top. Oh, and trust me – I tried. I tucked, I folded, I (shudder) power rolled (only children of the 80′s are likely going to get that reference). But it was all in vain. What is a habitually cold girl to do as winter approaches?

Should I? Do I dare? … really? Damn.

Ok, I reasoned, it’s not going to hurt anyone to try on some jeans in the safety of a dressing room, right? No one will know my dirty little secret except me. So I gathered up 5 different pairs of skinny jeans, and then casually placed an unassuming sweater on top to disguise my shame.  I assume that this is what happens when teenagers end up buying pretzels and boxes of kleenex when they purchase condoms. I felt equally exposed. I must admit though, the dressing room attendant did a valiant job of looking unphased at the horror that was the pile of skinny jeans draped over my arm. In fact, he may have been an aspiring thespian, as he didn’t even blink as he passed me my number ’6′. A plastic reminder of just how much I was faltering in my beliefs.

I chose the dressing room furthest from the front. It’s larger and I have this superstitious hunch that when I step inside I magically become 8lbs lighter. Unfortunately this only remains true while in the confines of that particular room, but I will take it when I can get it. Once inside I gave my head one more shake as I unhooked the first pair of jeans from the hanger. It was difficult not to snicker as I pulled them up over my feet. Goddamn, these were tight… not don’t-fit tight, but snug-almost-cutting-off-the-blood-flow-to-my-lower-extremities tight. How do these hipsters do it? Oh yeah, they are generally too busy scouring the earth for undiscovered music to remember to eat. Perhaps this is why they often have that glazed over look that I always mistook as them suffering from ennui? But no. NO! It was the pants slowly blocking off the central blood circulation to their brains. Poor, poor hipsters. I’m so sorry for judging you.

So I button them up and they are every bit as horrible as I first imagined. I was actually fairly surprised that they buttoned up at all, being that I’m an averaged sized girl with some curves to her. Sigh. Skinny jeans make me look like I have a pair of chicken drumsticks for legs, dipped in blue paint.

Damn you, beautiful boots, you are contributing the the slow disintegration of any shred of self esteem I once had. The things we do while in the smoky haze of love.

I begin to dejectedly peel the pants from my legs, and they roll down slightly – but get a bit tricky when I try to dislodge my feet from their clutches. I try to stomp the jeans off – using one foot to push the pants off of the other foot, all while gracefully balanced on one leg (look, no hands!). But then I misjudge (underestimate?) their hold on me and I fall forward, legs a massively long and awkward tangle, and smash my head into the fitting room door. Smash may be a strong word, really, as the room itself is only 4′ square. Bump? Hit? Greet enthusiastically? The impact of the hit shook the entire row of rooms. Although there were other people trying on things in the rooms beside me, no one acknowledged the earth shaking, wall vibrating thud. Thank god I didn’t knock myself unconscious, as I would have been found 5 hours later by the nonplussed, aspiring-actor fitting room attendant, in my polka dotted underwear with my pants around my ankles, bleeding from a head wound. (Ok, I’m totally lying about that part, there was no head wound at all, but blood always makes for a much better story, don’t you think?). I started to quietly laugh (again, these embarrassing displays of uncoordination happen on a regular enough basis that I mostly get surprisingly amused (and secretly impressed) at their ability to unexpectedly catch me off guard. Curses! Foiled again! The saddest thing about it is this is a very similar situation to what happened to me on a bus a few weeks ago. Except not involving head wounds and pants around ankles (I have some transit stories, but none quite THAT good).

After a bit of pulling (read: a lot of yanking and peeling and swearing) I managed while sitting on the floor (tongue stuck out in concentrated effort) to extract myself from the skin tight torture glove of denim.

Did I quit while I was ahead? Walk away with the smug satisfaction that I was right – SKINNY JEANS WERE THE DEVIL? No. I would not have this ego crushing experience ruin me. I had to persevere for the sake of the boots. Forge ahead girl, FORGE AHEAD!  So I did. And 3 pairs later, I switched teams.

I made friends with a pair of skinny jeans.

Now rather than seeing them as vicious, leg eating death pants I view them (cautiously) as fairly acceptable, fitting-snugly-into-the-beautiful-boots, not reminding me of blue-paint-dipped-chicken-drumstick-legs pants.

I’m still keeping them at an arm’s distance. If you don’t hear from me again, they’ve likely silently strangled me while I was sleeping…

Or, I’ve just continued the long standing tradition of sporadic posting. Or died of an internal injury head wound while wearing tight pants and beautiful boots.