Much to the dismay of parents and grandparents everywhere, skinny jeans have been in style for much of the 2010s. I was a freshman in high school before I could convince my mom to let me wear them, but I haven’t looked back since. They turned out to be a literal godsend for a short, curvy girl like myself: they can stretch a bit, they don’t hide my curves, and I can cuff them and expect them to stay that way. Sadly, though, skinny pants are falling out of style in favor of wide-leg pants. Regardless of how often I see them in stores or on runways, however, the fashion industry is going to have to pry my skinny jeans out of my cold, dead hands. Why? Wide-leg pants have none of the aforementioned benefits of skinny jeans.
My first grievance against wide-leg pants is that it’s virtually impossible to cuff them. I wear a size 14 despite being only 5 feet, 4 inches tall, so most pants available in my size are too long. This leaves me with three options: cuff them, watch as the ends slowly fray because I end up stepping on them, or get them hemmed. I don’t have the money to pay for a tailor, and frayed hems are no longer fashionable (this isn’t 1998), so I default to cuffing them. When wearing skinny jeans, you can cuff them before you head out and they’ll stay cuffed until you take them off. When wearing wide-leg pants, by contrast, you have to stop and re-cuff them every 30 seconds or so, and frankly, I don’t have the patience for that. So until someone figures out how to cuff wide-leg pants or clothing companies at least start coming out with different inseam lengths, I’ll stick to pants that I can actually cuff.
While many wide-leg pants are pull-on, I’ve tried a few pairs on in dressing rooms at various clothing stores only to realize that they have no stretch whatsoever. Where skinny jeans have lycra embedded into or sometimes even a big strip of elastic sewn into the waistband, the waists on wide-leg pants do not budge at all. Now, I suppose if your waist, hips, and thighs are sized in proportion to one another, this wouldn’t be an issue. However, most people aren’t so nicely proportioned. I, for example, have an average waist circumference but wide “childbearing” hips and thick thighs. This means that if I want any chance of getting my body into pants, they need to stretch a little bit. As long as wide-leg pants are made from the stiffest materials on this planet, I will not be buying them.
Some people try to discourage curvy girls from wearing skinny jeans, claiming that they only look good on skinny people. I can tell you from experience though those skinny jeans should be every curvy girl’s bottom of choice. Not only do they have stretch as I explained above, but they are blessed with the ability to show off the wearer’s curves without making them look bigger than they are. On this front especially, wide-leg pants are no better than sweatpants, which I actually hate wearing because I feel like they make my thick thighs look even bigger than they are (in all fairness though, I hate athletic wear and also think that wearing running shoes outside of the gym is an abomination). Unfortunately, I can’t expect wide-leg pants to suddenly become curve-hugging so I’ll be sticking to my skinny jeans, thank you very much.
I try to be open-minded about fashion and clothes. Like everyone though, I sometimes see things on runways or on Instagram and think that they look absolutely ridiculous. For me, wide-leg pants are that thing. I just can’t fathom why one would want to make their legs look huge by hiding them in stiff material and constantly stepping on their hems.