Sometimes I look at Kate Moss and I wonder if I can achieve the feats that she achieves on a regular basis—cutting 20 lines of cocaine in 45 minutes, bagging Pete Doherty, and touting her child in a Prada handbag. But most importantly, I look to her as inspiration for one of the hardest things that a woman can do in these troubled times: wear skinny jeans.

Skinny jeans are probably the most ponderous and troublesome item in the modern woman’s closet. In theory, they seem chic, wearable and utterly surmountable. In actuality, they make one’s thighs look like they are hotbeds of elephantiasis.

For the uninitiated, skinny jeans are pants that are tight all the way to the bottom. Sort of like leggings in denim form, in the sense that they are worn by hipsters and wildly uncomfortable.

Unfortunately, those dastardly celebrities with their liposuction and voluntary colonoscopies have radically altered our conception of the ugly skinny jean. On Sienna Miller or Lindsay Lohan, the skinny jean is eminently flattering and does not remind one of a particularly scarring episode of “Miami Vice.”

The pants look so good on these plastic women that one starts to think wild and crazy thoughts. “Even if one does not have the thighs of a newly born foal, one can still wear skinny jeans!” you say to yourself. “I can wear them! I will go to Urban Outfitters today!”

Going to Urban Outfitters is one of those sobering experiences that remind you that Corporate America is producing a mechanized culture and that “Reality Bites” is actually the worst movie of all time.

When I enter Urban Outfitters, I’m usually in a state of hazy euphoria. I hallucinate that I have Kate Moss’ legs, in skinny jeans. In reality, Daft Punk is playing in the background, and all the sales people are pierced and wearing wallet chains inappropriately. Ordinarily, such an environment would bother me. It does not. I am on a mission.

I spy the jeans, delicately laid on a table. I reach for them, but just in time my iPod spontaneously flips to the song, “I Can’t Go For That (No Can Do)” by Hall and Oates.

Immediately, I realize the error of my ways. I cannot buy skinny jeans. It’s wrong, I am not addicted to heroin or speed. I am not Tina Turner. I am not on “thirtysomething.“ Skinny jeans are an anachronism I do not deserve and would not do justice.

I put the jeans down sadly, full of the knowledge that I can never have the thighs or the white mod sunglasses of Ms. Moss or Mlle. Miller. I am not that awesome and I am not that English. Nor do I work at the Papercut Zine Library, which is the only other excuse for buying these pants. Until my next voluntary colonoscopy, I must abstain, but not without regret.

THREE FORM-FITTING TIPS FOR SKINNY JEANS WEARERS

1) Pair a pair of skinny jeans with a long shirt that looks like a dress in order to make yourself feel better about your generous thighs.

2) Do not pair these pants with sneakers. This is not “Working Girl.”

3) Learn what a “papercut zine” is. And then tell me, because I don’t know.



—Staff writer Rebecca M. Harrington can be reached at harrington@fas.harvard.edu.