In my twenties, I swore that it would be a cold day in hell before I let any man dictate what I was going to wear. That was then. Now here I am, standing in front of my armoire which is literally overflowing with clothing and all I can think is, I have nothing to wear. I let out a huge sigh, prompting my maddeningly curious three-year old to ask “Mommy, what’s wrong?” I have nothing to wear, I tell him. “You could wear these,” he exclaims excitedly, as he pulls a pair of black stretchy gym pants from a mountain of black stretchy gym pants. “These are your favorite.” Ouch. He’s right, but ouch.
I have become a cliché lately. In my twenties, I saw mothers clad in black stretchy pants toting their children, and I judged them. How could they just let themselves go? Don’t they even care about their appearance? Don’t they care about themselves? That will never happen to me!! I was always well-dressed. One aspect (of many) that I hated about my last job was that I had to wear scrubs every day. I couldn’t wait to go home and put on “real clothes.” I felt frumpy and shapeless. Yeah, that was then.
I go to the gym every day, ergo I wear gym pants every day. I go to the gym at 9am. I sweat like my insides are on fire, and it’s far from pretty. The old me (the young naive me) would balk at going anywhere except straight home to shower, get dressed, and do my hair and makeup. This me, however, thinks nothing of lugging my two children to the grocery store immediately after the gym. This me has no problem with my hair dripping and pasted to my head, or with the tiny rivulets of sweat that are still trailing down my neck and chest. This me has no problem with my flushed cheeks.
Don’t misunderstand, I do actually shower every day. It just doesn’t tend to happen until noon or after. After that, however, I have no excuses. It’s at this point I could/should wear real clothes, but then “gym pants logic” starts to kick in. I’m not going anywhere, I tell myself. I have to feed my kids, clean, do laundry, etc, so why put on makeup, or blowdry my hair, or put on real pants? It’s not every day, but it is the majority. I’ve even apologized to my husband for buying a lemon. “Sorry I hooked you with my impeccable grooming and stylish dressing, and now you are stuck with this.” He says he doesn’t care. He tells me I am beautiful no matter what. But I can’t help but think that if the roles were reversed, would I want to come home to sweatpants every night after working all day? Probably not. It’s this line of thinking that keeps me from sliding into total gym pants oblivion.
Gym pants are a slippery slope. One day you are in yoga pants (no, I DO NOT do yoga, just so we are clear) in the grocery store and the next day you’re starring on the “People of Wal-Mart” website in your finest Loony Tunes pajama pants stuffed sloppily into some UGG-ly boots. This thought terrifies me. I make a promise, to myself, and to my amazingly hard-working husband, that I will try to put on “real clothes” (hair and makeup included) at least three out of five weekdays. That’s a lofty goal, but I am determined to put in the effort.
I hit a snag. I was another age when I cared so much about how I looked. I was also another weight. As I have continued to eschew jeans for my beloved gym pants, my body has been changing under all that spandex. I no longer have the bump on my hip that I could rest the laundry basket on. I have collar bones and biceps. The me of my twenties would not recognize this new me. It’s at this very moment, standing in front of my piles of gym clothes, that I realize the paradox of my situation. I care more about myself than the me of my twenties ever did. That girl dressed for other people. That girl was lonely and had no one that depended on her for their every need. That girl was not a mother or a wife. This me feels infinitely more comfortable and, dare I say, beautiful, in her own skin than the dressed-to-the-nines me of my twenties.
Despite her insecurities, that girl did know how to dress the body she had. That girl didn’t have a crippling fear of gaining all the weight back, of being heavier than ever, because (though she had no idea) she was the heaviest version of herself. And you don’t worry about losing what you never had. Am I hanging on to jeans that are two to three sizes too big out of superstition? Or is it because some part, no matter how minute, thinks I will indeed be that size again one day? If I never buy smaller jeans, then I never have to be sad if they ever get too tight. Gym pants are very forgiving of a multitude of sins.
Keeping all those clothes is beginning to feel like I am planning for failure, and that prospect is unacceptable to me now. I take a deep breath and step off the cliff into the abyss. I gather all the clothes that are now too large and stuff them into trash bags, which I hastily deposit at the nearest Salvation Army donation center, lest I change my mind.
So now I am in a sort of limbo. The fat clothes are gone and I have yet to find a pair of jeans that feels truly good. While my beloved gym pants may be sublimely comfortable and functional, I realize that they may not truly convey how good I feel in my skin. I have worked my ass off (literally) to get to where I am. I have achieved one of the greatest successes in my life while wearing gym pants, but that they have become a security blanket. So begins the quest to find actual real clothes not from the workout section that make me feel really good. But I refuse to completely forsake my gym pants. I do, after all, feel my most beautiful when I am flushed and sweaty in my gym pants, even if that twenty-something girl in the store judging me doesn’t think so.