Killer Pants
Fashion can KILL you. Oh, yes it can.
As I lay at the bottom of a flight of stairs I had just crashed down – head first – that wasn’t necessarily the first thought that came to mind.
The first thing I did was a quick analysis. I was in pain but more so in shock. Within a few seconds, I was able to quickly assess my ability to move my neck, my back … Everything seemed OK. But then I glanced down at my hand and went straight into panic mode. I had broken a finger. I’ll spare you the gruesome detail of how that was one thing I knew for sure – as Oprah would so eloquently put it.
Only a day later, after enduring a five- to six-hour wait for an emergency room physician to finally put the thing back into its upright and proper position, taking a series of pain pills and then finally facing my friends to explain how I managed to lose my footing did it hit me:
Yeah, fashion can kill you.
My accident can be traced back to the day when I came across a pair of pants I hadn’t planned on buying. I was at a Northside boutique with the mission of helping a co-worker pull clothes for a cover photo shoot. But I happened to come across a cute pair of wide-leg pants with a generous cuff.
My first mistake was trying them on, just for the heck of it. Then came the selling point. For the first time I can recall in my adult life, the first pair of pants I picked off a rack fit perfectly. Not too short. Not too long. Not too snug. Not too large. They fit like a glove.
The experience was nothing short of miraculous. My typical experience in a dressing room is to try on two-dozen blue jeans, pants, cords or whatever, only to walk out of the dressing room frustrated, mad and – 91⁄2 times out of 10 – empty-handed.
So it made perfect sense that I was standing in front of the cash register minutes later with the pants draped over my arm, handing a stranger my credit card.
Fast forward some time later and I’m falling down the stairs in those miraculous pants, breaking a finger and bruising my body and pride in the process. How did it happen? Most of you probably already know. My heel got caught in one of those generous cuffs, and I went hurtling down the stairs.
The unfortunate part about the whole incident is it didn’t have to happen. I knew for a while the pants were bad news. I had tripped while wearing them at least five times before, just while casually walking. After the first tripping incident – in which I almost fell flat on the sidewalk – they should have disappeared to the back of my closet.
But, as my trip down the stairs revealed, I didn’t have the sense to put them away. Apparently, I had plenty of fashion sense: Keep on wearing them until you break a finger or a leg or something.
I know I’m not alone. How many of you can’t seem to stay away from the stilettos, the wide-legged pants, the hard-to-walk-in mules and platforms that apparently put your lives at risk on a daily basis? YouTube has a plethora of videos of women falling because of some fashion-related accident.
For now, I’m putting away my killer pants. I’m determined this time around.
Let’s hope I’ll maintain my common sense. My fashion sense could do me in. Really.
