Buying Jeans When You’re Short Sucks

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I used to get made fun of for never wearing pants. Not that I went bottomless, I just preferred skirts with tights over pants, basically every day. It’s not that I hate pants. They just seemed to hate me.

Here are some reasons why pants and I have not gotten along:

-Most women’s pants are made for people who are, let’s just say 5’7. I am 5’3. This means that I have countless memories of walking around in the snow, my pants far below the bottom of my shoes, collecting ice, snow and dirt all over the bottoms.

-Flared pants were really in when I was growing up. This means that my very short legs had an hourglass shape with big flares taking up half my lower real-estate. In retrospect, this was very embarrassing to debut at school on a daily basis.

-For some odd reason, when people make pants for short people, they assume that you are “petite,” aka very small. Either they will make the pants even more child-sized to accommodate what they imagine as your tiny bod, or they will make them differently shaped for what they call “curvy” girls. Fashion designers seem to think that “curvy” girls have big butts but super-tiny waists. That means the pants are big around your hips and way-too-small around the middle. I am curvy, but that does not mean I have a Barbie-sized waist.

ANYWAY, despite these problems, some fashion labels do employ designers who know what it’s like to be short/have a big butt. I’m sure there are many, but I have to give most of my credit to The Gap. Somebody there truly understands the plight of Becky Lang.

Here is why buying pants at the Gap is not so bad for shorties like me:

  1. The sizes run slightly big. This is nice for any girl who grew up listening to Abercrombie justify why they purposely don’t make anything over a size 10.
  2. All their pants come in short people size.
  3. Short size doesn’t mean it has a comically tiny waist or only fits tiny people. Their pants always fit me pretty perfectly.
  4. Their styles are usually more timeless. I won’t be walking away with ripped jeans bedazzled on the butt.
  5. The jeans last for years.
  6. The Gap isn’t actually expensive. I almost always walk in to sales upon sales upon sales. If there aren’t any, I’ll ask if I can get any kind of deal for paying with my Gap card, and they’ll usually give me 10-20% off. I can walk out of there with 8 new outfits and some cool PJ’s for like $200.

Thanks to The Gap, I have been wearing pants again. Best of all, they are not even covered in snow and street junk, because they are actually made for short people like me. Woo-hoo.

Where do you buy pants for your short self?