From the moment they first appeared in a tabloid, I hated them. Tight-fitting, ankle-hugging, feet-enlargening skinny jeans. I shuddered whenever I saw sunglassed celebrities casually strolling through L.A. in their ballet flats and upside-down triangle-shaped denim pants.
When they first appeared at my school, I cringed. Skinny jeans were reminiscent to me of tights under turtlenecks that I had been stuffed in from the ages of five to eight. I remembered the horrid coldness of the polyester and how I could never fit my feet into the tiny legs.
I swore to myself that I would never allow myself to be wedged into a pair of skinny jeans.
Lo and behold, on a recent shopping spree, my friend and I were browsing through XXI Forever when we stumbled across a shelf of brightly-colored skinny jeans. We pulled out the brightest, coral-colored ones and held them up to our waists, laughing at how drowned out the colors made us look. She threw a pair at me. "Try it on!" she urged.
I guessed at my size, and, laughing the whole way past the exhausted dressing-room attendant, entered a room and closed the door. The moment had come. I was about to try on a pair of skinny jeans. I pulled them on my right leg (almost falling over as my foot bent the wrong way at the knee part of the pant leg) and then on my left leg. Then I turned to face the mirror.
All i saw was bright coral pants.
If I closed my eyes, I wasn't blinded by the color, and I could feel how these pants bent and moved. I could grab my foot and hoist it above my head in these jeans. (I later learned that I was in a pair a size too large for me.)
Upon exiting the dressing room, I made a beeline for the same shelf of jeans. I flipped through the colors and finally found a dark blue-ish gray pair. I rushed back to the dressing room, past the same exhausted attendant, and pulled this new pair on.
The former skinny-jean hater stared at the mirror and fell in love with that pair of pants.
Now I sit here, looking at my lovely gray jeans, which are hanging on my doorknob a few feet away. I think I'm going to go put them on and dance around the house.
Give things a chance. They just might be the perfect fit.