she might put the party in the pants

I have a party to go to this weekend, and I was kind of horrified when I found out that I might have to dress like an actual adult instead of wearing dark jeans and high-heeled boots and a pseudo-dressy top like I normally would. I’m in a sucky, fat-feeling, body-hating phase right now, and not all of my clothes fit, and I was not looking forward to shopping for more clothes. Yet I somehow found myself trying on about fifty pairs of pants this week.

What I wanted: flattering black dressy pants, preferably in a fabric and style that would work for my office and for parties this month.

I had no idea how insanely difficult it would be to find such a thing. And while I’m at it, can I just rant again briefly about skinny pants? GODDAMMIT, fashion industry. I hate you so, so much this week. Why are skinny pants in again? Why is it that out of twenty styles of dress pants in a given clothing store, nineteen are skinny pants? I’m especially looking at you, Old Navy, you sorry excuse for a business.

Let me tell you all again about my stupid body, in case you don’t know or have forgotten. I am short all over, but I am also short-waisted. I have unusually large feet for my height. I have big legs – not necessarily fat-big, though I am certainly feeling fat-big right now, but muscular-big as well. I have a big ass. There is absolutely no reason whatsoever for me to wear skinny pants. EVER. They will never, ever flatter my body. And, for the record, they don’t flatter most bodies.

Bootcut pants, on the other hand, were made exactly for people like me. I don’t need a damn bellbottom-esque giant flare. All I want are bootcut pants. Why is that so hard? Maybe I’m out of touch and I’m hanging on to a trend that is long gone and I’m going to become That Girl with the spiral perm and the bangs and the tapered jeans long after they stopped being cool. You know, the girl you suspect is homeschooled and really churchy because she is just so very unstylish. THAT GIRL. But you know what? Right now I’d rather be THAT GIRL in a pair of pants that flatter me.

Whatever. I hate everyone and I am a little black rain cloud.

I finally found a really excellent pair of black BOOTfreakingCUT pants at Kohl’s last night shortly before coming home to the poo disaster. The pants were too long in the store, but I was wearing flats and figured that when I wore them with heels, all would be well. The pants were on sale, and I’d literally tried on dozens of pairs of pants at this point and this was the first pair I was happy with, so I bought them. And then I went to Target and got some very adorable shoes, as illustrated in the picture right here.

After spending two hours on the floor scrubbing poo out of my carpet, and while waiting for my bedding to dry so I could actually, y’know, sleep, I decided to try on the pants and the shoes. And of course, because nothing at all was destined to go right last night, the pants still puddled a bit on the ground even with those shoes on. So I figured, maybe my trusty high-heeled boots will work, since they’re a bit higher. And with the boots we had no puddling, but the pants still touched the ground. Clearly this was not going to do.

The tallest shoes I have are a pair of black dress shoes with three-inch heels. They were actually fine with the pants, but the problem with those is that I’ll only be able to stand up for about ten minutes in them, and walking will certainly be out of the question. I’ll be drinking a bit, so I really need all the stability I can get, and at the rate I’m going if I wore those shoes I’d break my ankle this weekend. So they were out.

As a last resort, I tried yanking the waist on the pants up as high as it would go. In addition to the inevitable camel toe situation caused by this “solution,” I looked like an idiot and the pants were clearly not down with the plan. In order to keep them up that high I’d have to pin the waistband to my bra, or maybe give myself a full wedgie and hope that the power of my giant ass would keep the pants in place.

What the pants really need is to be hemmed. Unfortunately I have almost no domestic skills and very few sewing implements. The chances that an alteration shop can turn them around in only a few hours today are slim to none, and I have a feeling that even if they could do it that fast, they’d end up charging me more than I paid for the pants in order to rush the job.

One of my coworkers has suggested that I get that fabric-bonding stuff that you use instead of sewing. I am thinking about giving it a try, but if I do, I will also need to purchase an iron, and maybe an ironing board. Yeah, I don’t own an iron. See: almost no domestic skills, above, and shut up. Also, I own a clothes dryer and fabric sheets, so I rarely need to iron. Okay, so maybe I do that. I get the fabric-bonding stuff and a cheap-ass iron. Once I get home with it, I am extremely concerned about my ability to create a straight and proper hemline. But maybe it’s time for me to quit being a baby and sack up and figure it out.

So, what do you think? Should I try the fabric-bonding idea, or should I just go with the giant wedgie plan?