Something About New Clothes

With spring weather coming, eventually, my wardrobe needed some change. Really my taste in clothes from one season to the next is a matter of sleeve-length only. As daring and adventurous as I can be with food, I’m stale and predictable when it comes to fashion, though for men, you seem to only have three options when it comes to clothes: Stuff for Kids, Stuff for Douche bags (seriously, who wears two polo shirts at the same time?), and Stuff Your Father Wears. There doesn’t seem to be many options for the 30-year-old male who just wants to look nice and not feel bored by his clothing options. Maybe I feel this way because my clothes come from department stores/mall clothes.

For a while, all my clothes came from Old Navy because they made pants in fat-guy sizes that didn’t scrimp on “style” meaning they weren’t just that flat blue color Levi’s reserves for such large-sized jeans. Now, I’m relatively normal-sized, so I have options. I’m wearing 36 X 34 jeans and, somehow, wearing large shirts, which is something I think about way too much. Right now, I’m wearing a pair of 36-waisted jeans and it’s awesome. I have on an extra-large shirt right now, and it’s billowy on me, which is awesome. These are the feelings that inspire song. I should be singing with a whole troupe of dancers, trapeze artists and trained dolphins behind me hammering out a spectacle devoted to the awesomeness of my smaller clothes sizes. So, I guess it makes sense, emotionally, that I’ve been to Kohl’s three times in about a week, buying three pairs of Levi’s (off the motherfucking shelf, yo!) and about a half-dozen or so shirts.

I’m not sure why I’ve settled on Kohl’s to bestow my clothing spree. You’d think I’d spend more money and time at such fat-shunning places as the Gap or Banana Republic (which are nothing like Old Navy at all…nope, not one bit) or have a friend go into American Eagle to get me a shirt or something. Make clothes shopping a way of exercising demons of inadequacies past, like a Maury Povich show where the picked-on and abused are now suddenly good-looking and they confront their tormenters. But, I don’t have a lot of teasing demons and I already have two sweaters from the Gap, plus I’m not sure where else to shop vengefully besides the Gap, particularly since I’m 30 years old and I don’t think I’m allowed in any other stores with smaller clothes or I’d have to register with the state. I’m blessed to lack a history that I have to avenge now, but at the same time, how great would it be if I had one.

That’s the real problem here, and why I haven’t posted in a while. When I take to the keyboard in the mornings, I try to think of ways I’ve been nailed to a highly-reinforced cross due to my weight, but I never was. The pressure about my weight came from within, never without and even then it was more of a general self-loathing, a kind of depression aimed at my fatness. I never felt judged or wronged or shunned or anything that amounts to drama about my weight. And those moments of true self-loathing where I’d abuse myself were fleeting and I’d move on. Truth of the matter, I’m too good-humored and reasoned about my weight to make anything interesting with it. I never wanted to be like anyone else and never saw my weight as getting in the way of being popular, loved, or having any emotional needs met. I got along. At least that’s the way I feel right now.

I mean, smaller clothes? That’s it? That’s the source of all this joy? It’s weird, right? Clothes?  So what.  It’s fucking clothes and we all wear them.  It feels weird to me especially since I’m wearing pretty much exactly what I was wearing before, just in smaller sizes and they were never a huge part of my life. Why do I get so fixated on the clothing aspect of this whole weight loss? Are pants from the store fundamentally different than pants from Old Navy’s website? Not really. Blue jeans are blue jeans. Button-up shirts and button-up shirts. Polos are polos. Colors and design may alter a little, but it’s the same damn genus of clothing.

Maybe clothing played a bigger part in my life than what I realize, like I was somehow harboring jealous thoughts of all those boys in high school who wore Tommy Hilfiger shirts and whatever else was popular to wear then. It doesn’t change the fact that wearing smaller clothes makes me very happy, I just wish I knew why.