Backside Exposure

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I realize that there isn’t a need for moms to keep up with the fashion trends of the day, but I’d seen my children roll their eyes a few too many times when I wore my Levis that fit quite comfortably around my waist.

“Mom, your pants are so high, that’s embarrassing!”

And I had thought low-rise pants were the fashion mainstay only of plumbers.

So I decided it was about time I tried a pant that hit closer to my hips. My first pair worked fine. Okay, I felt a little exposed at first, but I soon learned that keeping up with another trend—wearing my shirt untucked—had the pleasant side effect of covering my exposure.

Boldly, I order a second pair from a catalogue; I was on a roll. The day they arrived I tried them on. They were certainly a bit lower than the first—the ‘waist’ hit three full fingers below my belly button. I suppose it’s no longer called a waistband at that point. However, with the right length top to cover, they actually looked good. Of course, seeing as I was now wearing all of my shirts over my waistband I couldn’t see how my children knew where my pants hit—belly button, hips, wherever, but they seemed less embarrassed, at least by how I wore my pants.

Well, looks isn’t everything, because while they looked good, they felt… insufficient. Or I should say, I felt insufficiently covered. I tried washing them and drying them, working to shrink the waist enough to have it take hold a bit higher on my waist. No such luck. Today as I walked through the grocery, I found myself hitching up my pants. Perhaps one needs to start this fashion at a younger age so one acclimates to the pants-on-hips feel before stretch marks need concealing.

When I got home I tried taking the waist in with a binder clip, so they wouldn’t slip down quite so low. That worked pretty well for awhile, but in time the clip started to poke into me— especially when I sat down. Somehow having a sharp implement in my hip bone didn’t seem a good trade off to cover my exposure.

Now I’m trying one of the most versatile of products—duct tape. I’ve cinched in the waist and taped it with duct tape so the pants fall only 2 fingers below my belly button, a definite improvement and actually not uncomfortable.

I’ve learned a valuable lesson; I shouldn’t buy pants that hit more than 2 fingers below my belly button. Oh right, and I shouldn’t succumb to my children’s pressure to wear fashion that just wasn’t meant for post-pregnancy bellies. Time to pull my Levis back on.