I did it. I finally broke down and stopped pretending that my Gap and Guess jeans still fit. I went with my husband and son to our favorite mall today and didn’t even pause to leave my drool prints on the window at BCBG. I marched — ok, waddled — past the stores in which I usually shop and set foot for the first time in a Lane Bryant.
Not that I haven’t shopped LB’s before. I’ve just done it online where anonymity and electrons protect me from the pitying stares of skinny people walking by with “Pity about her fat ass, because she has such a pretty face” written all over their own.
Until now, though, I’d limited my LB purchases to a handbag, some necklaces and quite possibly the single most comfortable pair of yoga pants I’ve ever worn.
Today, I just couldn’t take it anymore. We’d gone out for sushi, see, and as usual I overindulged in my love of spicy salmon rolls and whatever the sushi chef recommended. (Answer: damn near everything.) We hadn’t even begun window-shopping and already my waistband threatened to cut off circulation to my lower body. Also, it was hot.
Being hot and uncomfortable is never a fun experience for Chubby Mommy. Bad enough to be laboring for breath but also sweating? I might as well be exercising… and we know how much I hate to do that.
So I stepped into the LB Outlet store with the intention of sucking up as much of their air-conditioning as possible before re-joining my husband and son (who were enjoying their skinny selves at Coldstone Creamery with little regard for my misery).
Well, I was there already, why not try on some clothes? In fact, why not try on some jeans and maybe find something a bit less restrictive than the Gap pair shrink-wrapping my body as my sweat dried.
That’s when I found them: the new LB “Right Fit” jeans.
Jeans that actually fit both my ass and my waist… a waist which, it turns out, I actually still have when clad in pants designed to follow curves, not fight them. Jeans — most importantly — that don’t promise all sorts of stretchy material and then look like they’re made out of, well, all sorts of stretchy material. Jeans that are lightweight, perfectly comfortable and actually reveal that my ass does not reside on the back of my knees.
I bought three pairs. Yep, three! Then I slipped back into the dressing room and swapped my Gap crap for one of the new pairs before strutting out, wholly comfortable and quite confident again.
My husband came out of Coldstone licking the last of his Chocolate Devotion off of his lips and said, “Hey, have you lost weight?”
My son said, “Mommy, where’d your Buddha Belly go?”
I have to admit: I felt SO much better about my body, too, even without having slipped on the leopard print “boy short” panties still in my shopping bag.
Best money I’ve spent in a long time. (And, yes, the panties look great, too.)
Chubby Mommy