Smile

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I’ve been bothered by my skin lately. Like, really bothered. It all came about because I’m in smaller jeans, now… You know, my skin-neh-skin-noo-skin-nah jeans that I was hooting and hollering about… Well, they sure fit me well- in the butt, thighs and in the length… But the lower belly area below the waist where the zipper is sure is annoying. We call it the tomato. Some call it a camel toe, but this is not the toe of a camel, rest assured. It is alllll just boring, old loose skin. It is just where all this skin is hanging off of me like an apron that I have to force it into a pair of pants. And as I get smaller, the crotch to waist length gets shorter in pants, too, and this whole dropped-waist, low-rise jeans business that people wear now doesn’t do me any favors!

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I remember shopping with my mom as a kid and we’d try on pants, trying to find a decent pair and she’d remark that our pants were ‘smiling’ at us. She’s the one who coined the term ‘crotch smile’ to describe what happens when too much flesh is forced into too small of pants. The pants pull tight at the apex of the crotch giving one a ‘crotch smile’ that spreads both ways across the upper thighs and pushes any excess flesh up and out of the pants, creating a whole new problem called the muffin top. Classy. And forever and ever I notice whenever I have the crotch smile and try to vanquish it from my wardrobe. So, anyhow, I was talking to some friends of mine at work, whining about all the extra flesh I have and how hard it is to push it all into my pants. I explained the crotch smile to them and grabbed it, tugged on it for illustrative purposes and then realized I should write a post about this! The crotch smile- how much I hate it and how hard it makes my life! I ran home, put on my jeans, took pictures found this:

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Do you see the crotch smile? No? That’s because it only exists in my mind. I’ve been walking through the world all self-conscious and hyper-aware of my non-existent crotch smile in my new jeans. Sure, it does happen, like in the first pair of jeans, but that, apparently, is not my default. Color me surprised!
So, my skin, while copious and a pain in the booty when I’m working out, is not the neon sign I thought is was. Sure, you can definitely see it when I’m wearing workout gear, and I can certainly hear it when it’s not all secured down properly, but it’s not the problem I generally feel like it is. Mostly, I think, I just want it gone and complaining about it makes it into a problem I need to solve, but I don’t think it’s actually a problem I need to answer or fix just yet.