You can't do this with clothes shopping. You have to see what the stores have. You have to try things on. Ask associates if they have other sizes in back. The entire process is irritating to me.
I've been putting off buying new jeans for a while now because of this. I own two pairs of jeans. I've had them for a couple years now. I alternate the pairs. However, a couple months ago, one of them got a rip in the knee. At first, it was a small tear, so I kept wearing them trying to pass it off as something I did on purpose (it may have worked if this was the early '90s). Unfortunately the rip got bigger and bigger, so I eventually had to put those aside as junky jeans that I would only wear around the house.
That left me with one pair. Well, having only one pair of jeans means that they get washed twice as often. That along with wearing them twice as often ends up wearing them out twice as quickly. Of course, being a couple years old, they were already worn out. Without an alternate pair, their condition got worse pretty quickly.
So, today I finally bit the bullet and took a trip to the mall to buy new jeans. This brings me to the overall point of this blog post and probably the biggest reason why I hate jeans shopping. It is extremely hard to find a pair of jeans that fit me.
I'm going to tell you a little something about my physique. As I mentioned before, I exercise fairly frequently, and I eat pretty healthy. I'm 5'9" and weigh 160 pounds. I'm not all shredded like an Abercrombie model. I don't have a 6 pack, but I'm probably only a few body fat percentage points away from one. No normal person would ever call me overweight.
However, I cannot fit into a pair of nice jeans for anything. The reason? For my size, I have a huge ass and big legs. Think of a guy version of Jennifer Lopez. It's not fat. My lower body is all muscle. My quads are ripped with all the muscle groups readily visible. My legs are just very strong for my size, which is probably why I'm as quick as I am.
Of course, this doesn't help me find a decent pair of jeans. If you were to take a tape measure and measure my waist, it would be less than 30 inches. However, if I bought pants with a 30 or 31 inch waist, they're made so tight in the legs that I can't even got them up over my thighs. Today, I had to try on 4 different sizes until I found one that fit. It ended up being a pair with a 34 inch waist. Then, I run into another problem. They fit great in the legs, but they're so loose in the waist that I have to tighten my belt to the last hole just to keep them up. The waist of my jeans end up looking like they're scrunched tightly together with a draw string.
The whole situation is just very frustrating to me, and I find myself asking who are they making these jeans for? Seriously, you would need to have no ass and legs like a toothpick to fit into the jeans that coincide with my actual waist size.
You know it used to just be women that had to worry about clothes made for unrealistic body types. After all, it seems like designers think your average woman has a body like this:
As gorgeous as I think Mila Kunis is, her ass isn't exactly a shining example of the female figure.
Apparently, designers have noticed the trend in women, and tried to copy it in men by bringing skin tight jeans, that I thought we had left behind for good in the '80s, back to the mainstream. The only guys that can fit in them are the effeminate ones. Do women really like their men to be scrawny with chicken legs?
It's not like I'm only talking about top of the line designer jeans here. I'm not looking for Calvin Klein or Gucci (do they even make men's clothes???) jeans. I'm talking about the middle end stores like J. Crew and Banana Republic.
As a guy with strong, muscular legs, the only options I'm left with are to purchase low quality jeans (from Walmart or something) or stick with decent jeans but have to buy them 5 sizes too big in the waist just so my ass can fit into them. I choose the latter option and invest heavily in belts.
I realize this was a feminine sounding rant, but it really was the thing that pissed me off the most today. My next post will have to be about basketball or something to balance this out.
9 comments:
Try Levis 550s or 560s jeans.
If you are going to have/wear them for years. Take them to a taylor and they can take in the waist for you.
Try custom. I've had great luck with the old Levi's Personal Pair program, but since they killed that...
Lands End does custom jeans.
http://www.landsend.com/ix/mens-clothing/Men/Assortments=Custom-Clothing/index.html?seq=1~2~3&catNumbers=1&visible=1~2~1&store=le&merchAsId=17&tab=1
So does Penney's.
http://www4.jcpenney.com/jcp/XSolutionsDHTML.aspx?deptid=53006&catid=68299&refpagename=X3%252Easpx&refdeptid=53006&refcatid=62949&cmAMS_T=X3&cmAMS_C=C3&CmCatId=53006|62949
It seems like a luxury, but stuff that fits and flatters is awesome.
The downside is that neither do button-flys, and I'm a little pendantic about that.
You also might try Target jeans. The Mossimo ones seem to fit pretty well if you have beefy calves and quads like me. I have no glutes, though.
E
amen brother
Levis.
Agree with Mossimo. Cheap and good looking. I have a 29inch waste and beefy thighs because I do a lot of squats. These jeans still fit nicely.
- pharmacy kid
lucky jeans are very sexy and everyone looks good in them!
try bonobos pants. they're specially designed to fit right on most guys.
I have the same basic proportions that you do. I raced bicycles for the better part of a decade starting in my mid teens. Twenty years later, I've still got massive thighs and a muscular butt and a 30" waist. (I do still exercise a fair amount)
The baggy fit jeans are your solution. I've been wearing them ever since they came out. They may be baggy in the legs and ass, but to keep them from falling down, they have to be snug enough to catch the hips.
What looks baggy on some gangsta thug wanna be fits me perfectly. I buy my clothes at off price stores that sell discounted merchandise from department stores, so the selection is different every time, and I have no brands in particular to recommend. However, there is always something that fits me when I go shopping- I've never had to leave empty handed.
Relaxed fit jeans might also work depending on your proportions.
Lastly, (don't laugh) jeans sized for women work well in a pinch, since women are naturally curvy and have big butts and thighs(at least the kind of women I like do). With a lot of brands, you can't tell the difference between the womens and mens jeans unless you look at the label inside.
I used to buy jeans sized for women when I couldn't find anything else that fit. Nobody ever noticed, and after a couple of days, I was so happy to have jeans that fit, I never gave it another thought.
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