by Nikki Barr

Created on: August 03, 2008   Last Updated: August 05, 2008

If you think my thighs are big, I'm glad I'm not alone.

In the last few years, a change in the dynamics of design has occurred which only reinforces my fear that my thighs are nothing more than two Goodyear blimps suspended from my hips. Pants, like cars, have gone aerodynamic or some other feat of engineering with a technical term, but in lay person language, the scourge that is "skinny leg" pants has overcome the nation.

Even the very name of the pant "Skinny Leg" implies that if it doesn't fit you, you are fat. Or, at least, your legs are. There are other styles, but they are essentially the same, with such names as "Curvy Cuts." I can assure you, I am so very not curvy and these pants are just roomier in the hips and slightly more give in the thigh, but not much.

So, I find myself, standing in the dressing room-florescent and peculiarly arranged lighting glaring back at me in the mirror, amplifying the sight of me finally getting a pair of pants that fit my legs, the only problem now is that they are two sizes bigger than what I wear-hip and waist wise. Sadly, the pants make my legs still look like they are wrapped in sausage casing and yet, not able to be kept up of their own accord.

In the dressing room, cramming my body into these size 8 jeans, knowing they must fit, the size 8s that I wore in are the same brand and the same style. Maybe if I jump and down, shake my hips, wiggle my legs a little more maybe, just maybe I will find that miraculous space for my excess body.

Lunch, obviously, is now out. There will be no lunch, I think as I come to the realization that this isn't going to work. The waist would definitely fit, if I could just get them that one more inch up; dinner is becoming iffy. I didn't look this fat when I left the house, this is what I get, I think, for not weighing myself before I left.

I peel off the denim demon and head back into the wilds, looking over rack and rack of pants, pulling out a pair here and there, thinking this looks right. They are a size 16. Maybe I'm kidding myself, I think, with the size 8. I've never been worthy of an 8, it must be a fluke. I decide to try a 14, the legs look right. The legs fit, but I float in the rest; I feel like the guy on TV with the affliction where when he spoke he made no sense to those listening, but in his head, it was all very, very clear.

Finding jeans you like; that look good and are within budget are, admittedly, the holy grail of women shoppers; perhaps even men, but I wouldn't know. I

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