Boy Talk: Pants v Skirt

As I stood in the lift, pretending to watch the numbers but really secretly observing the fashions in the elevator, I compared myself with the girl in front of me (as girls are prone to do). We were similar in some ways - well, not really. We were both wearing heels [hers barely fell into this category, being a mere 2 cms off the ground and in, frankly, shoddy condition], and like me she was primarily wearing black. She had one of those heinous Guess handbags that rape my eyes everytime I see one. But the key difference here was she was wearing pants, and I am wearing one of my difficult-to-breathe-but-worth-it-for-the-waist-accentuation skirts. Seriously, these high-waisted skirts work miracles - I feel like Jessica Rabbit everytime. Which at first was hard to feel comfortable wearing, given our obsession with the androgynous, hipless, pre-pubescent skinny look.

I digress. Pants. She had skin-tight pants on. She had a great figure. I suddenly felt less like Jessica Rabbit, and more like Jessica Simpson post-John Mayer (for the ill-informed: fat). And it got me thinking about boys and their preferences. I've had countless boyfriends who have tried to tempt me into wearing jeans more often - so much so, that some of them have bought jeans for me. "Oh, lovely!" you say. No, no, no - it was all for their viewing pleasure. The request that I wear jeans was always prefaced with a "you look so hot in pants, babe" (I shudder at the thought of these comments and the accompanying leer) and then "I just don't know why you don't wear pants more often". Groan. But when I saw the girl in the lift - and maybe it was my run-in with a fat-making mirror during my lunch break - but I suddenly felt like perhaps I should be wearing pants more often.

Unless you look like Mossy, I remain unconvinced

I can only assume that the obsession with them is mainly because skin-tight pants are pretty clear when a boy imagines you naked. In the eyes of a lecherous male, if your pants are tight enough, you're basically naked - the cloth is merely a second skin. They know where your hips start (if your pants even reach that high). They know the width of your thighs (ok, some muscle tone is missing, but candle light can be just as deceptive), they know where your crotch ends - i.e. the height of your hip, and they can get a pretty good idea of the curve of the bottom. In some particularly tragic cases, they are also well-informed about your nether regions by the presence of the infamous, and yet increasingly prevalent, camel toe [if you're fat, it's a moose knuckle]. The only thing they don't know, in boy talk, is whether "the carpet matches the curtains". **I am suddenly hating men.**

So what to do? I love skirts for the curves they accentuate, and the mystery they create (in my mind). And I'm not really one for dressing for men - I dress for me [and the occasional girl ;o)]. But the preference is clear. And that girl looked scrumptious, despite her rape-my-eyes handbag and boring shoes. And I'm smack bang in the middle of a drought, times are tough. Do I crumble and wear jeans? Or stick to the skirt and hope for a good old fashioned, skirt-chasing gentleman?