The Joy of Cargo Pants

Despite the triteness of the assertion, I’m finding that it’s hard to change anything these days. Change the bedding, change the bins, and change an outfit – no thank you. I’m getting to the point of just avoiding it all, and running naked into the hills with nothing but a face mask and my iPhone. As we hopefully enter the final stages of Lockdown 3.0, the judge’s houses portion of the pandemic, the only thing that is rapidly changing, is my desire to wear jeans ever again.

As a long time worshipper in the house of the skinny jeans, I’ve hardly known anything else, and skinny jeans were the only choice for the covering of my legs. Blessed with the body shape of a tube of toothpaste on the outs and upside down, I’ve always had a desire to show off my legs. Despite every other part of my body growing and rippling, my legs have always been my one constant. Lean but muscular calves, sharp but confident knees, and lumpy but sturdy (enough) thighs. They were always on show, and I loved to parade them around. Thus, skinny jeans were the perfect accouterments. Look everybody, I do have legs! And how lovely they are!

There was a time when I admit, I would have rather died than own a pair of straight-leg jeans, or boot cut. Even now, I would only purchase as a final resort. But a very hard lesson I had to learn, was that I was thinking like a thin person, and I wasn’t, and am not, a thin person. Those kinds of jeans can look very flattering, and very “fashion” on a small-framed individual. I am not such an individual. I possess the body shape of a bag of apples and an overhanging stomach that droops like a cheap washing line with five pegs on. So although the skinny jean was very much my friend, they never thought of me the same way. I became somewhat synonymous with ripped jeans, and not at the trendy knee or sensuous thigh, no, right down into the crotch and taint of my love machine. Easy access for some you might assume, for me, it was a Tuesday.

I always credited these rips with the glowing knowledge of my thicc-ness, how my arse and thighs had gotten so juicy that they just had to spill out of my jeans and become known to the world. But in reality, I had burst out of my skinny jeans because I simply did not fit into them anymore. I blame my job at the cinema for its constant and comforting supply of mega feast hot dogs and grab bags lay open, teasing me to devour them with their saccharine siren calls. Not that I cared much, I would just buy more jeans – after wearing the entire crotch out of them that is.  I made the move into suit trousers as casual wear, hoping this would also paint me with the aesthetic brush of an off-duty painter, or sensitive quiet soul who enjoys espresso and late 1980s Spanish guitar. I wasn’t, and am not, a quiet soul or off-duty painter. This worked well for me, until I once again began to gain more weight and eat more hot dogs. If it was a fight between the ability to wear skinny jeans, and the ability to tank three big bags of Doritos in ten minutes, I choose Doritos.

So I returned to jeans, skinny jeans, albeit of a higher waist size; the only jeans I could find that fit me, and one other fantastic paid of checkered pants from ASOS Plus Size for men – though I eventually had to throw them thanks to yet another crotch hole. If I were smart enough, I’d have branded myself The Crotch Destroyer and made some money off my lack of self-awareness. The last pair of jeans lasted a while longer than all the previous jeans, which surprises me, as the material they were made with was akin to spider webs. I love ASDA, and will always defend its honour, but fucking hell their jeans are terrible. I wore them until small holes began developing again, and in a fit of rage and fury, dashed them to a donation bag I have in my room to be given to somebody else to fit about. Tired and angry at not fitting into jeans due to an expanding waist size, and diminishing options for larger people within high street and supermarket fashion, I decided to drown my sorrows in a pair of Matalan black cargo trousers.

The very lows of fashion, I once thought, were the cargo pants. Made famous for me by alt-pop superstar Avril Lavigne in the early-mid 2000s, I never thought I would own a pair, I’m either way too uncool for them, or so stylish that I couldn’t bear to be seen in them. But if anything, this last year has taught me that I am actually deeply uncool, and this also makes me in fact, very cool. I know, I know, it’s a bit redundant to even mention the word cool, but I promise you this, think about buying some cargo pants and pairing them with black boots a la Timberland’s. No longer am I yanking at my crotch to separate the jeans from my sweaty bollocks, and no longer am I pulling them up higher and tighter to show off my petite and square shaped ass. I officially, do not care anymore.

So me and my Matalan cargo pants, have been enjoying a very blissful relationship as of two weeks today, and I couldn’t be happier. They forgive me when I eat too much, allowing me to shovel in as many hot dogs and Doritos as I please. They hide my famously shapely legs from the world, securing their beauty for my eyes and moisturizer only. And they have pockets all over the place – what more could you ask for? So the lesson for today is this, get yourself some cargo pants, and throw the jeans away. You certainly do not need to punish yourself by setting your alarm twenty minutes earlier, just to squeeze yourself into jeans that could blow at any minute. You, and your legs, deserve much better. And besides, they look fucking incredible with my black Timberland’s.