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Why skinny jeans are not sexy if they hurt

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Sreemoyee Piu Kundu
Sreemoyee Piu KunduJun 29, 2015 | 18:23

Why skinny jeans are not sexy if they hurt

A Bong? A spinster? A bitch?

It’s Monday morning. GAP, the American clothing and accessories giant at one of South Delhi’s posh shopping malls is spilling with over enthusiastic shoppers, mostly women. Most, like me, have battled a serpentine four-lane line outside the plush store to finally squeeze their way inside. A lot of them prefer to click selfies, their backs facing the T-shirt racks, as others giggle deliriously, hoping to gain entry into the trial room… another winding line. Their arms weighed down by skinny jeans in myriad colours.

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"Suno na…yeh bahut zyada tight hain, kya mein zyada moti lag rahin hun?" A newly married woman in her early 30s peeps suspiciously out of the trial room to ask her pot-bellied, balding beau, whose armpit smell almost makes me want to throw up.

"Umm… skinny in fashion hain… le lo…kal subah se jogging start karna mummyji ke saath…" he said, disinterestedly, looking at his iPhone.

"Kya mein zyada moti lag rahin hun? Bolo na… Tondh…" she called out.

The husband thankfully was replaced by two cheerful teenagers, in short denim dresses. Furiously updating their FB profile pictures.

"You know I need to lose weight man… have you seen Prats, she’s super toned. Zumba and pilates… six days… hot!" One of them said, while running her fingers longingly over a distressed skinny set of pants.

"Oh please… Prats is so f*cking moti… tonnes of flab on her stomach. She’ll look like a whale yaar… seen her muffin top?" her girlfriend slaps her back.

"Muffin top?" I whisper furtively. Sensing a portent panic.

Is skinny only meant for thin women? Is skinny only suitable for a certain age bracket? Is skinny always in need of male validation? Is skinny the reason I should have taken the Kellogg’s seven day challenge, or continued with my Kalkaji basement gym training under the tutelage of Pammi sir, or not slept all of last month, especially in the afternoons, after consuming a plate full of rice and greasy fish curry?

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Is skinny created to make me feel like shit inside? Is skinny bad for my soul? Is skinny skin-deep?

Earlier last week, a paper published in Neurology, Neurosurgery & Psychiatry reported that a 35-year-old Australian woman had to be hospitalised after she sported super tight jeans while helping a relative move. The woman’s feet became numb and finally she couldn’t even walk - her legs terribly swollen. The jeans so tight that they had to be cut from her body at the hospital. The diagnosis being that the pressure of the trousers combined with the squatting from lifting items had resulted in severe nerve damage.

I looked around in nervous anticipation at the sea of skinnies that confronted my gaze, asking myself why most of us would willingly subject ourselves to gnawing aches, pains and cramps just to look perfect, mindlessly following trends dictated mostly by the western world. Why a woman in loose, printed pajamas and a flowing kurti is immediately perceived as being "arty" à la Deepika Padukone in Piku.

A Bong? A spinster? A bitch?

Why, indeed, has female fashion been inadvertently linked to pain over the centuries? Corsets that rose to style in the 1500s and are now back in vogue, which create severe breathing problems, as are stilettos that were once famously described by ace designer Christian Louboutin as, "high heels are pleasure with pain". Body shaping hosiery, a lycra body suit that is a modern version of a corset or a girdle, manufactured by the likes of Spanx, are now available in India - they can be the cause for varicose veins, constrict organs, and restrict circulation; just the way over-sized handbags cause neck and back issues with prolonged usage.

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Why this sadistic insistence on fitting in all the time? Not peeing for hours? Battling fatigued ankles and swollen toe nails and a smelly fungal infection?

Why this association of power and success only with a certain type of footwear? What makes women in flats powerless? Why do most ladies instantly tuck in her stomachs while clicking a photograph? The way we almost always lie about our age after a certain age, that is. Why most ads for fairer backs and flawless underarms follow the same formula – the craving to be noticed by a man, an ache to be desired, wanted back. To be looked at again and again, like an inanimate object. To fit into a stereotypical feminine model, a common male fetish.

Why are we crushed so easily when we can’t get inside an old dress from our college times? Or cling onto our first pair of denims with a nostalgia that is preconditioned like first love? Slipping into them as if nursing a sort of celibate secret? Holding our breath, as the buttons act diffident. Bursting into tears when our spouse calls us "moti bhais" in front of our adolescent children.

Our daughters giggling, our sons giving us sympathetic sideway glances. Why does every fitness guru promise we will feel good inside when we shed inches?

The lure of wearing a swimsuit on an overseas vacation? A low-waist lehenga at a family wedding? To be the yummy mummy on the magazine cover you find at the parlour? A sort of virginal pleasure in being uncomfortable. The way your first night was built up. The way you easily lie about it… later.

Is there something deeply disturbing about how we battle the underwire bra, the G-string, the bikini wax? Every day, every week, every month, every year? Why we are so afraid of our real selves being discovered?

When was the last time an average Indian woman stood in front of a bathroom mirror, butt naked, caressing her curves, the uneven stitches from her painful C-section, her stretch marks from fluctuating battles with the bulge, telling herself that she is fine? That comfortable doesn’t necessarily imply callous. That she need not compete with herself all the time.

That I am not what I wear. But more…

That skinny is sexy, but also superficial. And if it hurts badly, then it’s not meant for us. And, that there is no such thing as zyada moti?

Last updated: July 27, 2018 | 17:37
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