When I’m Alone, I Try on All My Jeans

Is my fashion obsession self-soothing or self-abusing?

The jeans Christie Tate can’t help trying on biweekly

It’s never premeditated. I don’t know that I’m going to do it until I find myself carrying 10 or 12 pairs of jeans upstairs to our attic, which serves predominantly as my husband’s office. When he’s out of town or gone for the morning, though, I take advantage of both the solitude and the full-length mirror that’s propped against the closet across from his desk. It’s the only full-length mirror in the house other than the one in my daughter’s room, but it feels wrong to sully her bedroom with my jeans’ shenanigans.

I’ve been projecting my body anxiety onto jeans since I was a little kid. It was a pair of stiff Calvin Klein jeans that inspired my first body-shaming from a stranger. A saleslady who was annoyed she had to keep bringing me bigger sizes said to my grandma, “Where does she hide all that weight? I thought for sure the smaller sizes would fit.” It wasn’t exactly a verbal lashing, but I was a 9-year-old stuffed with body shame, so her comments landed like a fist to my flesh.

A few years later, I worried that none of the Guess jeans at Dillard’s would fit over my ample belly, which my ballet teacher bemoaned every time I stepped up to the barre. When I joined my first commercial weight loss program in high school and began to lose weight, my favorite activity was to post up at The Gap to try on jeans. Every few weeks I shimmied into a smaller size. I remember grinning at myself in the mirror, amazed at my shrinking body—surely all of my problems would vanish now that I wore such tiny pants! When I realized that a diminutive body size didn’t fix anything I hated about my life, I crashed into bulimia and depression. Through a Twelve-Step program, I eventually recovered my sanity and a healthy body weight.

So I’m mostly sane these days, but the tricky relationship with jeans persists. I’ve been using them to measure my body since grammar school. I never had a bathing suit phase, never gave in to a compulsive urge to try on my dresses. Jeans both cover and reveal my most triggering body parts—belly, butt, and thighs—which make them a perfect accomplice for someone with lifelong body dysmorphia. Whenever my weight goes up or down, I notice first in my jeans. Plus, jeans are a staple that I wear when I work from home, shop for groceries, and volunteer at my kids’ school. You’ll also catch me in jeans on a night out with my husband or at dinner with my friends. In my middle-aged life, I can go several seasons without wearing a dress or a bathing suit, but never more than a few weeks without jeans.

These days, when I reach the attic with my armful of jeans, the order I try them on is generally the same: I start with my “scary” jeans, the ones that are likely to feel too tight around my belly or thighs. Currently, the scariest is a pair of Hudson’s I got on clearance three seasons ago. They mostly fit when I bought them, but they were the kind of pants I could never wear if I wanted to eat a full meal or, say, chug a 32-ounce Gatorade. Once I got them home, they became the jeans I wore on the rare occasions when I felt most trim—never on the days near my period or if I’d recently eaten a heavy meal. I’ve worn them out in the world two times in two years. Both times, I got compliments, perhaps because the dark wash and tight fit made my legs look longer. You’d think the affirmations from others would induce me to wear them more often, but they have not. These jeans are too scary.

Another dicey pair was an impulse purchase I made on vacation. They fit tight as well, and this was after I’d sized up when I realized they ran snug. Trying these jeans on for funsies is an emotional roller coaster because there’s always a moment, right after I slide them over my hips, when it seems impossible that I’ll get them buttoned. That zing of panic takes my breath away. I like this pair just fine and think they flatter my shortish legs and long torso, but it’s impossible for me to separate them from that sizzle of panic. They’ll never be my favorite.

Next up are two pairs of corduroy jeans that also fall on the frightening side of the safe-scary binary. I’ve always been leery of how stiff and unyielding corduroy can be, though I once had a pair of J. Crew chartreuse corduroy pants that stretched just so in the waist and always made me feel svelte. I left them at a guy’s house after an ill-advised sleepover, and I miss them every day.

Getting struck by the stomach flu is wretched and unwelcome, but if I happen to suffer through a bout, you can bet I’m taking the jeans upstairs as soon as I recover and have a moment alone in the house. On those days, when my body is altered from violent illness, my pants-fear is less potent. I’m the boss of the jeans on those days.

Once I’ve run through the gauntlet of my spooky jeans, my mood ticks up. This ritual soothes me. Maybe I’m doing a little jig as I shift toward my safer jeans, those worn-in standbys that fit on my most bloated day. These are the pants I would happily wear to an all-you-can-eat Indian buffet. They’re soft, pliable, and never cause panic; I know they will fit over my hips, and I will have plenty of room even after I button them. They are a pleasure to wear. Extra bonus points for the black jeans I bought in Vegas that must have been mis-marked because I had to size down.

None of this should matter—smaller jeans, safer jeans, toxic jeans. There’s no excuse for taking this bi-weekly time to gaze at myself when people’s homes are burning, my daughter is growing up with less rights than I had growing up, and children were illegally seized in the middle of the night by government officials one mile from my house in Chicago. I hate that I still care about these fucking jeans, which is to say I care about the size and shape of my body. I wish I didn’t; I’d give anything to be free of this obsession and its time-consuming rituals.

Patriarchy and capitalism have conspired to imprison me in a state of body hatred, which started before I learned to write cursive or recite the Hail Mary. Convincing me to focus on my body’s flaws is a perfect way to disable my power, cut off my ability to connect with others, and distract me from what really matters. Because what really matters is certainly not whether my ass looks good in my spooky jeans.

I’ve never had the courage to tally all the time I’ve lost to my eating disorder and body hatred. While I’m grateful I no longer lose days at a time, I want to be more protective of the time I have left; I don’t want to lose even more precious hours to a lonely ritual that looks an awful lot like chasing my tail.

Of course, this habit is about more than vanity; it soothes me. When I get through the top half of the stack, sometimes I do a little happy dance because it’s joyful to wear pants that are soft, pliable, and never induce panic.

I’ve read articles urging me to get rid of clothes that don’t fit or don’t make me feel fabulous. I think they’re talking about my scary jeans, and yet, I can’t let go. The ritual doesn’t work without them. If I had to guess what my therapist would say about this habit, I imagine he’d conclude that I’m not actually looking for comfort; I’m looking for torture. I can hear his baritone voice: “That’s why you bought the jeans that don’t feel comfortable in the first place: torture.” We’d end up exploring my lack of trust—in my body, my appetites, my Higher Power, my recovery.

I also know the draw of this habit is partially that it’s a secret.

No one knows I do this. I would never pop upstairs and install myself in front of the mirror with an armful of denim if my husband was sitting at his desk four feet away. If my son was up there swinging a golf club or watching The Office, I would camp out in my office one floor below checking email and paying bills.

The most ideal conditions for my try-ons are when no one is in the house, though I’ve been known to take my jeans for a spin in the attic if my teenagers are asleep—nothing wakes them up, including their mother jigging upstairs because her scary jeans still fit.

The rub here is that I’m anti-secret. I believe what my therapist told me in 2001 on day one of my treatment for binge-eating, suicidal ideation, and anxiety: Secrets are toxic and take an emotional toll that you can’t know or understand unless and until you air them out.

Like anyone clinging to a secret, I have some solid defenses. Namely, this secret doesn’t cost money (I already own the jeans), hurt my relationships (no one knows!), or jeopardize anyone’s safety (it’s not Russian roulette). I’m not cheating, stealing, or lying. So what if I frantically try on my own pants to soothe my deep, lifelong anxiety about my body?

Of all the habits I’ve had over the years related to my disordered eating, trying on my clothes while alone in the house isn’t the worst. It’s not even in the top 15, given my history of bulimia, laxative abuse, compulsive running, and other troubling behaviors I was able to leave behind once I got into recovery.

But this jeans thing. I know too much to assume it’s meaningless. Shining a light on it, I suspect, will illuminate where I’m still stuck, where I’m still that lost girl in the dressing room, so very alone, so very deluded about the size of her body and its relation to her worthiness. I know what to do—open my mouth and tell someone. I know what’s on the other side of disclosure—freedom, peace, and connection. So what am I waiting for?

Christie Tate is an author and essayist whose work has been published in The New York Times, Carve Magazine, The Los Angeles Review, and elsewhere. Her debut memoir, Group, was a NYT best seller and has been translated into 19 languages. Her second memoir, B.F.F., was named one of the best nonfiction of the year by Amazon.