A search for the perfect pair of luscious Lycra tights should not be so difficult
You know, I wish I could make this a really great column, but I’m extremely busy right now and obsessively preoccupied. I’ve got a huge task ahead of me and it’s a real time suck. So with all that going on, it’s hard for me to concentrate.
The issue messing with my brain and time management is leggings. Specifically buying new leggings or yoga pants or whatever you want to call those luscious Lycra tights that have a hint of compression and provide the utmost in comfort.
A majority of my leggings have seen better days — as in, they’ve raised the polyester and polyurethane flag of surrender.
If you’re now wondering how one knows when leggings have called it quits, consider these three solid clues. One, your thighs constantly rubbing together have finally breached the structural integrity of the Lycra and you now have gaping holes in the leggings.
Two, your leggings have been worn so much that the spandex and/or elastane have lost all of their muscle memory and now bag and sag to such an extent that it looks like you’re wearing a pair of very sad jodhpurs.
Three, your leggings no longer stay up in all the important areas of staying up. I’m specifically talking about the crotch. Once Spandex fibers start to lose their tenacity, that section of the pants is the first to bid farewell, thus requiring you to have to pull up your leggings (and this is a conservative estimate) at least a million times a day.
In my pursuit to purchase new leggings, I find myself massively befuddled. If we lived in a world that made sense, I could just go and buy the same brand and size of my “retired” leggings.
But no, in the retail clothing arena everything is always being improved/made more fashionable with seemingly no thought given if the item in question even needed an “upgrade,” or if by improving they actually meant ruining.
This is exactly what happened to my beloved brand and style of leggings. They’ve been cursed with “improvement.” They now, gasp, have pockets. Yes, pockets. Big old pockets.
Pockets big enough to carry one of those ridiculously huge metal water bottles and a week’s worth of protein bars. I don’t think I’m wrong when I say I don’t need my leggings to multitask as a mini fridge or pantry.
I’m also fairly certain someone really needs to go check on the designers who thought up cargo pant leggings because I don’t think they’re OK. They can’t be.
Now, because my leggings have been desecrated, I’ve been thrust out into the cruel, unforgiving world of yoga pant/leggings shopping. It’s a journey that is fraught with physical and emotional turmoil. This is because in my quest to find the perfect leggings, I have to try on a multitude of different pants. This isn’t easy.
There’s a lot of physical activity required in getting into a pair of fresh leggings. At one point I felt like the big, bad wolf of fairy tale fame, huffing and puffing to get that pristine, never been stretched out Lycra, up and over my lower half. Trust me when I say the level of exertion required is not to be underestimated.
To date I haven’t found any replacement leggings that duplicate the wonder and majesty of my “retired” beauties. At this point I’ve started to contemplate the unthinkable: wearing pants with a zipper and a button.
Sure, it scares me, but at this point I might just have to give it a go.
Reach Sherry Kuehl at snarkyinthesuburbs@gmail.com, on Facebook at Snarky in the Suburbs @snarkynsuburbs, on Instagram @snarky.in.the.suburbs, and on TikTok @snarkyinthesuburbs and snarkyinthesuburbs.com.