In Search of a $200 Piece of Ass

This Sunday I engaged in that most New York of hobbies – shopping. I was in dire need of new jeans (my favorite pair having finally succumbed to the weight of carrying my ass around at least twice a week for 2+ years) and had decided to allow my usually frugal self to splurge on a pair priced at over $40. I don't normally even allow myself to try on expensive jeans on the off chance that my ass would look so hot that I would no longer be able to live within the confines of The Gap and all hope I had of saving my money to one day purchase a home would be lost. But on Sunday I was brave and decided that a true New Yorker should at least know what a $150 pair of jeans look like so after a stop at Lucky Jeans (where I had the sales clerk hold a pair of fairly hot $110 pants for me) I sauntered over to Bloomingdales and quickly gathered all of their denim offerings in a 3x3 dressing room.

There are a lot of ugly expensive jeans out there. In an effort to make my fitting room task more manageable I decided to cap my jean cost at $200 and so did not try on any of the pairs that cost more than an ipod but my general feeling about the $100 and above realm is that women are suckers. 7 for all Mankind, Joe's Jeans, AG jeans – all of them let me down. I was fairly impressed with the offerings of Chip and Pepper and True Religion but no where near $196 worth of impressed. The main issue with all of these jeans was my ass crack. While makers of jeans for commoners have finally dialed their rise setting from the Patriot Bill sponsored, "I Got a Crack Just Like the Liberty Bell" ultra low to a more modest "Mmmm hipbones" the seamstresses at the posh sweatshops haven't gotten the memo ("The Homeland Security Terror Alert level has been lowered from Yellow to Orange, Ladies: PUT IT AWAY"). So most of my time in the Bloomie's dressing room was spent using all of my upper body strength to yank each pair of jeans into waist territory – most of the time with no success. Considering the recent spat of celebrity underwear raids I would advise all jean companies to offer their clientele back up exposure protection in the form of jeans that actually cover the wearer's ass.

Besides the discovery that designer jeans are not offering enough coverage to be worth the cost I also made one less happy find. It turns out that I don't really have an ass. I'm not sure how I got to be 29 without noticing this but my first instinct it to play the denial card. I am not one of those apple shaped girls whose skinny legs lead up to a flat behind hidden under a few rolls of jelly. I am decidedly pear shaped and you would think such a designation would grant its owner a nice plump tookus free of charge. No such luck. Regardless of my weight my lower body is pretty much all thigh. And so while I have ample flesh to squeeze into the behinds of expensive denim none of it forms into the kind of mounds that Sir Mix-a-Lot would croon over. From the floor up It's pretty much little foot, calf, knee, thigh, more thigh, dark meat as far as the eye can see, GOD DAMN GIRL, relatively tiny waist -- this combo does not drop dead jeans make.

I did eventually buy that first pair of jeans from Lucky (Classic Rider fit) and I feel good in them. The jeans themselves are likely not worthy of their $110 price tag but after 3 hours in dressing rooms I was willing to pay that price just to get a subway ticket home.