Me & My Big Fat Butt

I've noticed, of late, that the hummingbird-like metabolism of my youth has slowed down a bit, and weight has been gathering around various portions of my person.

I've treated this development with a certain amount of scientific curiosity, as I've been lucky enough to not really have to deal with the whole weight-gain thing in the past.  But, coming into my "mid-to-late" thirties (as I expect I'll be calling them right up to 39 1/2), weight gain seems to be the natural result of eating french fries everyday and not going to the gym (who knew?).  And I've learned where I store the extra pounds, as it were.

I appear to have what can politely be referred to as an "hourglass" shape.  Meaning that my spare weight collects itself around the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn, rather than the Equator.  And while the gains in the Northern regions have been greeted with appreciation by certain males of the species (especially those in Construction), the more Southern increases have caused a little difficulty.

To wit:  I can't buy jeans.

I spent a rather frustrating afternoon at the mall, confirming this with "Jeans consultants" at several different stores.  These are the stores that come up with a bazillion different cuts of jeans "to fit every body."  So I'm standing there with a pair of low-rise, boot-cut, curvy body, short height jeans in what purport to be my size, and, well, there's a bit of a problem.

My butt is three sizes larger than my waist.  Honestly.  I am so not making this up.  If I put on some jeans large enough to fit my caboose, I can fit two fists comfortably in the space left between me and the waistband.  This isn't the sort of problem that can be solved with a belt; the damn things would just bunch up underneath it.

I can conceive of four solutions:

1.  Eat myself silly until my waist is proportionate to the rest of me.  This one does have the advantage of simplicity.  More french fries ought to do it.  But it is lacking in terms of, y'know, health.

2.  Diet and exercise until the rest of me is proportionate to my waist.  This one sounds good on paper, but requires substantial effort on my part.  Not to mention quite a bit of time.  So it's a long term proposition at best.  In the meantime, I still need to clothe myself.

3.  Custom made jeans.  My good pals at Lands' End promise custom jeans made to order to fit any butt.  (So does Target, by the way, and for a lot less money too.  Except, right now, their custom jeans are temporarily unavailable, so it doesn't do me a whole lot of good.)  The one downside with ordering custom jeans is that it takes three to four weeks for them to make up your individual pair of jeans -- and if you got one of your measurements (or "body types") wrong, it'll take another three to four weeks to re-do them.  ("What size pants do you normally wear?" It asks.  How the hell am I supposed to answer that?  I wear three different sizes!  That's why I'm custom-ordering, ya doink.)

4.  Buy more skirts.  Ah, skirts.  Big flowy ones that fit at the waist and just flare out everywhere else.  They're so forgiving.  My poor salesgirl at The Gap was so flummoxed by her inability to find a pair of jeans for me, she cheered right up when I found a skirt that fit.  (And was on sale.  So I was cheerful too.)

So, let's see what happens when my custom jeans arrive.  Of course, by then, I could be a size smaller.  (Or a size larger.)  The adventure begins.