The Perfect Pair of Black Jeans

There is nothing more elusive, more chimeric, or more enigmatic than the Black Jeans beast. Trying to find one is not a problem—trying to find the perfect one is nigh on impossible.

Men have it far too easy. I wish I could look as devastatingly perfect in a pair of tight black jeans as they do. Actually, maybe not exactly like they do. A number of men have jeans so tight that I honestly worry about the circulation to their dangly bits. It can’t be healthy, smooshing your balls up against a pair of black jeans and going out in the sun. No oxygen can reach them. Surely even sperm incased in testicles encased in scrotum need space every now and then? If the birth rate is falling, I think you can look to the perfect-yet-physically-debilitating black jeans for that.

But on to my hunt. I explained to the girl in the first shop my predicament, my predicament being that as a woman I HAVE HIPS LIKE EVERY OTHER WOMAN. This is a disability when needing new jeans. She looked at me and said; ‘we’ve got jeans for that.’ Hosanna, hey sanna! A cure! Alas it wasn’t to be. They didn’t. I tried on every pair of black jeans they had. No black jeans for hips like mine.

The second shop turned out to have a lot more range than the other store. I stood in front of the bank of jeans in wonder, awe and just a little bit of fear. At least the colour was decided. But then there was the choice between boot cut, tube, straight, skinny, stovepipe, wide, second skin, mid-rise, low-rise, high-rise, Brazilian rise…. With the added factor that high-rise isn’t actually high-rise anymore, it’s mid-rise so people don’t get confused. What? But changing it confuses me! Have all our rises sunk a level or two? When did this happen? I blame the hip-bone crushing low-rise-skinny era myself.

People try and tell me I have a classic hourglass figure. I see it more as a pear shape, or like a slightly meaty hen. I also wonder how ‘hourglass figure’ was described before the invention of the hourglass. You look like a particularly fine boulder I once saw. You undulate like sand dunes, only upended and not so gritty. I don’t quite know what you look like, but someone should invent something like it soon to make the descriptive process more straightforward.

In any case, I have found no black jeans. The perfect pair remains elusive. However, because of the confounding nature of the store layout and indeed the whole retail experience more generally, I did buy something. It was a pair of jeans. They are navy blue, of that high-rise-that’s-really-mid-rise variety. The experience almost made me cry; I went in intending to stay strong. NO, I thought, I AM SPARTACUS AND SPARTACUS NEEDS BLACK JEANS. Instead I bought a ridiculous pair of jeans completely contrary to my colour preference and shape. Damn you denim. Damn you to the murky depths of fabric hell.