Jan 26, 2018 4 min read

From the United Kingdom comes the news that people my age shouldn’t be wearing jeans anymore. A company called CollectPlus has handed down this edict about what’s good and bad in fashion:

The wearing of denim should cease at age 53.

How they came up with that odd number I don’t know, but I passed that age a few years ago. Isn’t it just like me to be going against the stylish Brits.

There are jeans in my closet – probably a dozen or more pair, most of them purchased late at night during online shopping excursions. The newest pair of jeans seemed especially appealing because they have plenty of a magic ingredient.

It’s called Lycra or Spandex, and the garment descriptions promise that denim made with those fibers will hold me in, smooth out the lumps and lift my behind. And if that’s not a reason to slide those pants into your website shopping cart and click Pay, I don’t know what is.

So the pants came and by golly, they are stretchy. It’s especially nice to have jeans with some of the magic fibers in the waistband. No woman my age really wants to wear pants with obvious elastic at the waist. But these jeans hide the stretchiness while still letting things exhale a bit when putting them on, and by exhaling I mean me.

They were magic jeans. Turning to look in the mirror, I saw that my behind was sort of encased in the pants, like the way an orange sits nicely inside its skin. In fact, I was so cheered by the overall removal of lumpiness that I did a little dance in front of the mirror. I’d found jeans that worked! And at my advanced age, too.

Off to work I went, a long day spent out and about filming a documentary. Halfway down a sidewalk, I got the sensation of having to pull up my pants. I stopped, put down my bag and in a most inelegant way, hoisted my pants back up to where they belonged.

Before I’d reached the other side of the lot, I stopped to pull up my pants twice more, each time looking more and more like John Wayne walking into a saloon.

Had I not hoisted, the combination of the drooping waistband and the forward motion of my legs would have pulled the pants down around my ankles.

Turns out the stretchy sisters – Spandex and Lycra – not only offer a bit of breathing room, they cause the fabric to grow as the day goes on. I used to want to avoid pants that left “knees” in the fabric by the end of the day. These pants had “knees” and also “thighs” and “butt cheeks.” The pants I slid out of at the end of the day were at least three sizes larger than the ones I put on that morning. People don’t lose that much fat in eight hours, although wouldn’t it be nice if we did?

After a hot-water wash and warm dryer, the jeans had snapped back to their original size, something akin to what happens to bread dough that rises and then is punched back down to size.

I haven’t worn the jeans since. They’ll look good on me, but only for the first couple of hours. Everything after that will be a battle between me and some Spandex. I’m just not up for that. After all, I’m over 53.

Beth Dolinar can be reached at cootiej@aol.com.