I haven’t always loved my body… In fact, I couldn’t honestly say that I love my body right now either. My tits look older than they should (thank you lactation + stretch marks), my stomach and hips are riddled with stretch marks and resemble a knotty pine table, with ever-lengthening lines, but my ass! Oh – my ass!

I love my ass.

It is not huge, but certainly ample. I’ve always had a nice curved top-of-the-cheek area as well as a bulbous-sort of bottom of the, um… bottom that would happily rest in your hands, should you ever be brave enough to grope me. Enough natural wiggle to be a preferred slappable surface with enough muscle tone as to not be a perpetual wave of skin and cottage cheese. It’s a sweet ass.

Even as I’ve gained weight or lost weight, my ass has been the one pleasant constant in my body-image department. When I lost a lot of weight a few years ago, my boobs all but disappeared. I went from a solid DD-cup to a full B-cup! I wasn’t too thrilled about that. My legs seem to grow in diameter at their own will, but because they’re really short, I’ve never really been able to consider them sexy. I mean, I’ve got a whopping 26″ inseam from cooter to cankles — this isn’t the stuff of dreams.

But I love my ass. I really do.

It’s the god damn jean retailers that hate my ass. I don’t understand — my ass has been nothing but sweet and pleasant and dazzling and sexy for her whole life! Why would the jean retailers hate her so??

I’m going to just fall back on the ol’ they-must-be-jealous excuse because nothing else makes sense.

I’ve discussed with you before how short I am — it’s not just my legs, but my entire being. I am under 5′ tall, but just barely and, even at my thinnest, my body shape has always been curvaceous. (And no, I’m not just a fat chick calling herself curvaceous or voluptuous or volumptious. I actually do have a biologically natural hourglass shape.)

Here’s my checklist for jeans:

• Petite length which doesn’t mean you do anything about the width of the hips — this just means length. Just because I’m short doesn’t mean I’m sized like a small child.
• Mid-rise which mean, mid-rise on my ass, not my stomach. Jeans for women with actual asses should be higher waisted in the back than the front.
• Back pockets that don’t look like mom jeans
• An actually slightly tapered waist to avoid the plumber’s gape
• Boot cut — not flare, not skinny, not straight. BOOT CUT. What ever happened to boot cut jeans?
• A dark wash without whiskering, strange sandblasting, or holes ALREADY in them.
• Void of all stupid embelishments (gems, embroidery, etc)

I don’t feel like I’m asking for TOO much here. But it’s IMPOSSIBLE.

IMPOSSIBLE.

In the stores, they carry petite stuff, sure… If they carry them above a size 10, then they’ve got such a short rise that I’d call them no-rise jeans which, for a girl who isn’t rocking a six pack, sort of just divides me into a linked sausage, no matter what I try. Muffins are delicious and sweet… Overgrown muffin tops are not.

So, what’s a short, thick girl to do? She must order her jeans online.

What’s the big deal, you ask? (If you’d just sit back and listen and quit with all these god damned questions, I could get through this freakin’ post.)

I just spent $424 to try on jeans. I ordered three styles, in two sizes each. Six pairs of jeans, you guys!

And you know what’s going to happen? They’re going to get here and I’m either:

1. going to try them on and be so dissatisfied with everything that I return all of them
2. going to try them on and return the wrong pair, thereby ending up with jeans that are either slightly too tight and sausage-link-me or they’ll be slightly too large and give me did-she-just-shit-her-jeans ass.

In closing, FML.