Because I Can

This tie I'm wearing is not meant to impress you. There's no ulterior motive behind it.

I'm not asking for a raise, or going on a job interview, or giving a big presentation. I'm not attending a funeral, or officiating at a wedding, or sneaking out for a romantic rendezvous, either. The only reason I'm wearing this tie is because I'm not fat anymore. 

Overweight? Yes, by about ten pounds, but no longer by thirty. 

The more forgiving khakis have been shoved to the back of the closet, along with extra-large dress shirts and some of the poofier cargo shorts, waiting for the next time I balloon into them. That's been the story of my waistline throughout my life. Bone skinny as a little kid, fat through middle school, bone skinny through high school, slightly doughy in college (thanks a lot, beer), slender at the wedding, second-trimester imitation during the pregnancies (thanks a lot, greasy cravings covered in cheese sauce), and so on through the years since the kids were born.

The most recent weight loss has been possible thanks to a way of eating we've adopted that seems to promote a better balance of calorie intake to calorie burn. We haven't cut out sugars, but we have cut them way back. We haven't cut out flour, just all-purpose flour. You'd be amazed the array of baked goods still available if you embrace baking with alternate flours like oat, almond and tapioca. The purpose of this post, however, is not to preach about healthy eating. Rather, it is to explain why I'm suddenly wearing nicer clothes.

You see, when you gain weight it can be disheartening and embarrassing to purchase stylish clothing to fit your new girth. We've all got those lines we don't want to cross. For me, it's thirty-six. So long as the zipper zips and the button doesn't tear free of the fabric and rocket across the room like a ballistic missile, I'm buying nothing larger than a thirty-six-inch waistline. The pants might be screaming, the pockets might be in a state of permanent gape, and my shoes might be staring up longingly at a hemmed cuff hanging halfway down my calf, yet I will convince myself they fit perfectly just to avoid the reality that I truly need thirty-sevens. 

Unfortunately, that approach to denial does have its limitations. Suits are a perfect example.

Whoever invented tailored suits should annually be burned in effigy because suits don't care if you can't cope with your new found fatness. I own several suits and they're all tailored, which means they were purchased at times in my life when I could stomach the notion of being publicly measured like cattle at an auction by a stranger drawing chalk lines on my ass. The moment your weight fluctuates five pounds in either direction, a tailored suit looks more like something you borrowed from a cousin who's almost your size. Gain more than ten pounds and the suit becomes a relic of bygone days, relegated to the far ends of your closet along with winter coats, embroidered sweatshirts and Halloween costumes.

The pants aren't the half of it, either. Few things scream "unchecked weight gain" louder than suit jackets so tight your range of motion is only slightly better than someone encased in an upperbody cast. When your double-breasted jackets don't even afford you one-ply protection from the elements... When your vests ride so high up your stomach they might as well be tube-tops... When your shirt collars are so tight you have to unbutton them to swallow, that's when you trade out suits and ties for husky khakis and reasonably attractive golf shirts.

Then comes the day you take a diet seriously, or begin exercising regularly, or reduce your intake of sugar and gluten as we did. The pounds gradually melt away. You become reacquainted with your jawline. Your nose no longer appears ready to pop off your face. You realize your clothes are suddenly so roomy you wouldn't look out of place singing lead for the Talking Heads. Little by little, you experiment with pants, shirts and suits you gave up on long ago, and they fit!

Which brings me back to where I began. I'm not wearing this tie to impress you. I'm wearing this tie because I can.




2016 Mark Feggeler

Skinny Pants

Pants are tricky things.

You can't even purchase identically marked pairs from the same manufacturer with any assurance each will fit you as well as the other. Hanging in my closet at this very moment are two pairs of Levi's, both marked thirty-six (shut up) by thirty-two and aquired on the very same day at the very same store, yet one pair fits perfectly and the other pair causes any of a variety of medical conditions, including diminished circulation, acid reflux, diarrhea, loss of appetite, and depression.

My prime time for wearing skin tight jeans was a brief window that lasted from 9:57am to 3:42pm on March 12, 1986. When that window closed, and increasingly so as the years have progressed, it became morally irresponsible of me to don tight-fitting pants. The more my natural form is left to the imagination, the better a place the world becomes. Therefore, the slimmer of the supposedly identical pants remains hidden away in the closet to be saved for those days on which I can button them without experiencing light-headedness.

The Italian does not subscribe to this theory when it comes to his own form. After all, being in the fifth grade, he has the luxury of existing primarily in a world of oblivious 11-year-olds. The girls have not yet transformed into the style-conscious butterflies middle school will make of them, and the boys are more focused on ultra cool things like dirt and origami ninja stars than they are on what clothes their friends are wearing. This creates an awareness vacuum in which children are able to wear their favorite clothes, regardless of how bizarre or poorly fitting they are, with little fear of mockery.

Which is why the Italian frequently must be rescued, against his will, from certain articles of clothing in his wardrobe. Being a typical American child, his closet is stocked with far too many choices for him to wear, even if he decided to wear a different outfit each day of the year. Despite the expansive selection available to him, he regularly chooses the same shirts over and over again. One shirt, in particular, has survived several recent purges led by My Lovely Wife. It is a gray t-shirt with a screenprint image of a drum set. If he could, he would glue the shirt to his body.

One recent wardrobe casualty was a pair of jeans that had hung around a few months longer than necessary. To label them "flood pants" would be an insult to flood pants, but showing off his ankles was not their biggest failing.

The Italian, you must understand, is a bone-skinny kid. He's so skinny, zombies wouldn't waste time trying to eat him if they ran him down during the apocalypse. If anything, they'd probably offer him a spare limb to eat. Because he is so darned skinny, not only do we need to buy slim-cut pants for his emaciated frame, the pants also need to have elastic built into the waistline so he can draw them to fit his five-and-a-half-inch circumference.

But skinny pants are not outgrown gradually. One day they fit perfectly, the next day the Italian looks like he's been shrink-wrapped in too little denim.

He vocally protested the expulsion of the skinny pants and made several futile efforts to model them for us in the hope we would change our minds and agree they did not make him look like a disco-era reject or a Christmas ornament with blue pipe cleaners for legs. His argument fell on deaf ears and the pants were added to the donation pile in the basement.

On a positive note, it does seem like his appetite has improved now that he's wearing pants that allow food to settle into his digestive system.



© 2012 Mark Feggeler

Thanks a Lot, Victoria...

Years ago, I was searching for something special to give My Lovely Wife for Christmas. It was a stage in our relationship when I hadn't yet learned not to waste time buying her clothes.

Word to the wise, if you're considering buying your wife clothes you should hand her instead the money you would have spent and a set of car keys. She's going to bring it back to the store no matter how hard you tried to match her size and style, and you'd better hope she gets a full refund instead of store credit so she can pocket the cash and get herself something from a store she actually likes.

Anyway, several years of togetherness had emboldened me enough to venture into Victoria's Secret to scout for a present. Why Victoria's Secret? Because Frederick's of Hollywood scared the crap out of me. Everything on display at Frederick's of Hollywood looked like Tim Curry's spare wardrobe from Rocky Horror Picture Show. There might be a few corners of Victoria's Secret that, even now, I shy away from to avoid feeling like the resident middle-age perve, but at least Victoria's Secret doesn't stock every shelf with fur-lined, crotchless, black lace panties. If that's your thing, God bless you, they just seem rather impractical to me.

So, there I was, wandering aimlessly among racks of ladies' delicates and bras, lingerie and lacy undergarments, when a sign announcing five pairs of panties for just twenty-five dollars presented itself.

I normally fret over buying underwear even for myself, so don't ask me why the notion of purchasing panties for my wife suddenly struck me as a stroke of genius. It's the kind of thing that could end in tears, reproach, and recriminations, being a meaningless Christmas gift similar in sentimental value to an ironing board or a skillet.

"Here, I thought you needed new drawers. Don't worry, they were on sale."

See what I mean? The only way to make it potentially more creepy and less heartfelt would have been if I had bought used panties from Goodwill and wrapped them with a free sample pouch of detergent.

And what if I bought the wrong size?! That's a whole nother can of worms to be opening on Christmas morning. Nothing says "I love you" like giving your wife a present that suggests you thought she was a whole lot bigger than she really is, or implies you think she needs to lose weight.

On Christmas morning when she unwrapped the pretty pink box, My Lovely Wife gave me the pitying, unenthusiastic look I should have expected. But her opinion of the gift quickly changed once she tried them on. Somehow, by the grace of some Christmas miracle that must have missed its intended target and veered off into Victoria's Secret during my visit to the mall, I managed to bring home the exact right size and style. Each Christmas since then, a box in pink wrappings has appeared under the tree.

Until now.

Because the geniuses at Victoria's Secret decided to alter the shape and fabric of one of their best selling undergarments, that perfectly proportioned panty now exists only in name, a fact we discovered last year only after the box was opened.

And so ends an annual tradition. Thanks a lot, Victoria's Secret. Where am I supposed to buy my panties now?



© 2011 Mark Feggeler

Off the Rack

The size of a problem sometimes can be measured in inches. In my case, however, the measurement itself poses a new problem.

Being neither tall nor short, thin nor fat, lands one in a confundatory middle ground that clothiers must assume can be served with approximates and guesstimates. The exceptionally-sized people of the world might find it frustrating never to be able to purchase clothes off the rack, but what they don't appreciate is the Law of Acceptability those of us who can have had to accept.

Do these jeans look good on me? Well, they poof out around your ass and make your legs appear bowed. But they fit around the waist and hang well at your heel. They're acceptable.

I have managed to reign in my weight recently, so I don't need a thirty-six inch waist. However, I certainly haven't shed enough pounds to warrant needing a thirty-four inch waist. What I need at times like these is for some retailer to order and stock pants that measure thirty-five inches in the waist. Yet, for some reason, the only jeans I regularly find in a thirty-five inch waist are buttonflies. It bewilders me that they even make buttonflies anymore. I had a pair of buttonfly jeans back in high school and I nearly peed myself five times just trying to get the damn things off in time.

And don't get me started on shirts and suit jackets.

When I buy a suit, it's a silly exercise for the tailor to even wrap the tape measure around my chest. I need a forty-three regular. Okay? Got that? A forty-three regular. Now, go into any men's clothing store and try to find me a forty-three regular. Regardless of the store, there are always only five crammed between the forty-twos and forty-fours, and they look like they've been hanging there since 1944.

Shirts are easier to find, but we go right back to the Law of Acceptability.

How does this shirt look? Well, it's baggy around your belly and you're tucking three extra feet of shirt into your pants. But it fits you well across the chest and the collar is roomy enough that your head doesn't look like it's going to pop off. It's acceptable.

A large shirt is just small enough to restrict breathing, pinch my armpits, and untuck if I so much as think of moving. An extra-large shirt, which is what I end up buying, can sometimes make me look like a kid who raided his Daddy's closet for a game of dress-up.

Maybe someday, before I die, someone somewhere will realize that people come in all shapes and sizes, including those in between the ones they already think we are.



© 2011 Mark Feggeler