Confession:

I'm only one Team Jacob t-shirt and one Justin Beiber album away from middle school.

When I was thirteen, I essentially acted like an adult.  I watched movies like Citizen Kane, read Dickens and Vonnegut, and listened almost exclusively to classical music, with some classic rock occasionally mixed in.  At youth gatherings, I inevitably ended up in the corner talking to one of the adult leaders about Ibsen's feminism or something we had both read in the New York Times.  I didn't fit in well with the kids my age, and I didn't know how to relate to their obsessions with make up, boy bands, and middle school drama.

Now I'm twenty two, it's almost as if I'm making up for my lost adolescence.  Sure, I'm still a reasonably responsible individual, and I still probably wouldn't fit in well with a group of tweens (somehow I don't think they'd appreciate my fondness for words like "bucolic" and "effervescent" or want to discuss the pros and cons of legal positivism).  At the same time, however, my tastes have become remarkably juvenile.  From what I usually feel like watching (10 Things I Hate About You, Post Grad, Clueless) to what I usually feel like listening to (Glee, High School Musical, and Taylor Swift [sorry Britny!]), I ought to be fourteen years old.  I prefer Seventeen to Cosmo and Forever 21 to Banana Republic (although the latter is purely because, if I have $30 to spend on clothes, I'd rather get eight t-shirts and a headband than one camisole, especially if it might be made by child labor either way).  I worry about who I'm going to sit with at lunch, and I'm still mildly scandalized when I find out two of my classmates are sleeping together, even if they've been dating for months.  This week, to celebrate the mid-term break, I checked two books out of the library:  James Joyce's Dubliners (a collection of literary short stories) and Nancy Farmer's The Sea of Trolls (a young adult novel about an eleven year old who gets kidnapped by Vikings).  Guess which one I loved, and which one I found boring and may never finish.

P.S.  It turns out the secret to enjoying Notre Dame football games is to sit with one's friends, at least ten rows behind obnoxious sophomore boy and his sophomoric friends (who, more than halfway through the semester, still haven't managed to figure out that their assigned seats are not in the middle of the law student section).

The Skinny

A few years ago, whenever I saw someone wearing skinny jeans, I shuddered.  The 1980s and early 1990s are not a fashion era I find very aesthetically appealing, and I didn't really want graffiti denim and parachute pants to make a comeback. I still feel that way, but I've become acclimatized to skinny jeans - and seen a lot of people pull them off adorably.  But my closet remains resolutely full of flared pants and bootcut bottoms that are quickly becoming "mom jeans"

Part of it is due to my overall ignorance when it comes to fashion - I love clothes, but I like shopping on the cheap and definitely don't keep up on my Chanel and St. Yves Laurent (if that's even a thing) or what ridiculous get-ups are draped over models on the catwalk (they can pull off anything... I can't).

Another reason I've avoided skinny jeans is because many of them simply don't fit.  A while ago, I found a great chart that evaluated your measurements - and it kindly informed me that my ankles would only be proportionate on a woman who stood over six feet tall.  Many skinny jeans in my size, even some of the stretchy ones, literally will not fit over my monstrous heels because the bottom hems don't have much give.

Both of these obstacles could be overcome... there definitely are skinny jeans out there that would fit, and they've become so pervasive that you can pick them up at K-Mart and wear them with any shirt on the shelf.  The real reason I persist in my mom-jeans is psychological.

There was a period of time, when my family lived in a ridiculously big house we couldn't sell and my family was trying to pay two college tuitions (both mine and my mom's) when we didn't have much money.  As a result, I was dressed mainly in hand-me-downs from relatives and the bounty from an occasional trip to DI.  When I was 14, I owned three pairs of jeans, and all of them were skinny jeans.  Today, this would probably be fairly normal.  In 2002, back when Britney was still all that and most teenagers didn't even text, wearing a pair of skinny jeans was something only women over 35 attempted.  Any passer by could have seen that I must be wearing clothes someone more sensible had rejected, and I was painfully aware of it.  Shy 14 year old girls don't tend to excel at "working it" in "vintage". 

When our/my money situation changed, I loaded up on flares and gave those skinny jeans back to DI.  Unless you count weak moments in dressing rooms when I've temporarily thought about giving in to the trend, I have't been in a pair of skinny jeans since.  My past experiences being unfashionable have scarred me to the point where I now insist on being unfashionable.  My main consolation, besides how awesome it is to wear skirts and not have to worry about pants at all, is that at some point bootcuts will be back and I'll be the hippest 30 year old mom around.