Being little, I always wanted to be bigger. I wanted to be grown up and cool like the people I saw on TV; I wanted to be like my babysitters, like my parents. In my mind, a marker of maturity, especially due to my parents’ frequent use of them, was jeans.
I remember buying jeans with my dad online from Gap when I still wore kids’ sizes. I was little, but in my mind, due to my great responsibleness and jean-wearing, I had the maturity of someone much older.
I don’t know exactly when I got my first pair of jeans or when I started to love them, but I estimate they really started to take over my wardrobe before or at the beginning of eighth grade.
In the summer before seventh grade, I got my first pair of women’s jeans with my grandma. I wanted flare jeans badly, so off we went to a Hollister, where we found the smallest size they had. When the ends piled at my feet, my grandma assured me that she would hem them to fit me just right: so she did, and they did. I just loved that I fit into women’s jeans.
Despite their wonderfulness, my flare jeans weren’t the most practical, and the perfectly fitting quality didn’t stay true. The same happened with my Gap jeans. They began to get too small, so I once again advanced in the world of denim. With my mom, my next pair of jeans was Levi’s 501 jeans, and these didn’t need to be hemmed. These had no hint of costume or child. They made me feel powerful, and I was finally ready to be someone who wore women’s jeans.
In the winter of eighth grade, I visited my best friend, Willa, in New York City, and I met her friend, Alice. There is a picture of us — wearing jeans, sitting on the floor, talking, laughing. We went shopping by ourselves, and we shopped in the women’s section. Later on our trip, my mom and I went to the Levi’s store in Times Square and bought a pair of Levi’s Low Loose jeans that I still have. I don’t think I expected them to fit me forever, of course, but they were my jeans. I love jeans. I wear jeans to bed sometimes. And I loved these jeans.
These jeans don’t fit me anymore, and two weeks ago, my new jeans arrived in the mail. They’re a darker wash, and they will sit in my drawer of the many jeans I love, even when they don’t fit me anymore.
