Slash Pockets: Bane of My Existence

As a woman with a relatively small waist-to-hip ratio (my waist is much smaller than my hips), shopping for pants is one of my least favorite activities, ever. As a matter of fact, whenever I go shopping for pants, I tend to end up with a skirt, or shoes, or underwear... and no pants. Within the generally dismal category of pants-shopping is the especially miserable subsection of shopping for 'nice' pants: dress pants, khakis, etc. This is why I wear the same 3 pairs of pants to work over and over again.

Shopping for dress pants is particularly terrible for 3 reasons: 1) they are always made of thin fabric, which accentuates curves that I'd really rather hide, 2) they always have a really boxy cut which utterly fails to accentuate the curves that I want to call attention to, and 3) most of them have slash pockets. AAAAUUUUUUGGGHHH SLASH POCKETS. Many of you, who may not harbor the same irrational hatred for slash pockets that I do, might not know what they are. Here is an example:

Now I'm even more pissed because I had to make this picture.

I think that the reasoning behind slash pockets is that they are meant to be less visible than the kinds of pockets you find on blue jeans, and thus present a more "clean" look. That may be true, if the person wearing the pants is a model, a tree, or a curtain rod. Unfortunately (for me), when you put slash pockets on pants and then put those pants on someone with round hips and round thighs, the fabric gets confused and pulled in too many directions, until it just gives up entirely and puckers outward.

Artist's rendering. This is by no means a 'clean' look.

Anyway, tomorrow I'm going to visit my future graduate school, to meet some faculty and students and that kind of thing. I don't feel right wearing jeans for this occasion, but I also can't wear any of my 3 pairs of 'work pants,' because ever since I started losing weight, they look a little more like 'clown pants.' So as much as I hate it, I had no choice but to go shopping for new pants on Sunday night. Naturally, I went to Target, since it's the source of 90% of my current wardrobe. I went at 8pm, which gave me an hour to get in, find The Perfect Pair of Grown-Up Pants, and get out. I breezed through, right past the socks and purses and jewelry and bathing suits, picked up every pair of semi-casual nice pants I could find, and went back to try them all on. Every mother-loving pair of pants either made me look short and round, or they had slash pockets, or both. Certainly none of them imparted the level of sexy professionalism I was looking for. So, rather than blame my voluptuous hips for all this, I blamed the pants, and set them on fire.

As they smoldered quietly in the dressing room, I perused the shoe aisle to comfort myself. And the shoe aisle did not disappoint. For on the first rack I came to, I found The Perfect Pair of Not-at-All-Grown-Up Shoes. There was only one pair left, and they were my size, and they were ONLY FIVE DOLLARS.


And that, Internet, is how slash pockets ruined my life, and then really cheap shoes turned everything around. I still don't know what I'm going to wear tomorrow, but surely these shoes and a nice pair of jeans will say, "Consummate Professional" just as well as khakis and brown flats would have. Right?