By Willa Umansky PZ ’27

I wanted to wear pants because it’s cold and the wind has been nipping at my thighs more than it used to since I’ve been calling paradise home for long enough now. I tried a few pairs that I thought could work. I ended up in tights and a dress with the cold still sinking its teeth into me. I don’t quite despise my body, but I miss my pants. 

Later, Coco and I talked about how despite our appreciation for the hips that crown our welcome to womanhood, we miss our pants that we bought before we caught a case of the curves. I took a cab to the doctor’s office because I was running late. I was trying on pants and was too busy inspecting my stomach to look at a clock. I don’t remember the first time that I went to the doctor alone, but I know that the women who work at the front desk surely don’t know what my mom looks like. 

I haven’t weighed myself since a family vacation in 9th grade. I’ve let my weight ebb and flow even if the weight of it crushes me sometimes. I can’t look at photos of early high school, because I grow sickeningly jealous of baby me. And it makes me want to weigh myself. But I won’t. I have hips now and I don’t want to see a number reflective of that, so I’ll keep the feeble peace between me and my body and blissfully lock myself in ignorance. 

The woman who works at the front desk and doesn’t know my mothers beauty or how we have the same smile at a certain angle tells me that we’ll do the basic stuff while my doctor helps a toddler in the other room. I have eight more years here, but apparently it’d be weird for me to hold on for that long. I wonder when she’ll retire. 

I get on the scale. 

I make the mistake of looking. 

I say “Jesus fucking Christ” under my breath as my vision blurs, but this woman doesn’t know my mother and doesn’t know me without curves and probably wonders why someone with hips wants to be weighed on a scale with Sesame Street stickers, so she can’t tell that anything is wrong. 

I’m sitting in the chair that my parents used to sit in with my doctor across from me. She tells me that my hair looks great, pauses and breathes, then says I look really good. I still have tears obstructing my vision. I think she said what she did because she can tell my throat is growing a lump because she knew my moms hair before it was gray and she gave me shots before I was brave. I say I thought I looked good before I saw the numbers on the scale that had the same stickers since before I had hips. We talked about quitting cigarettes and my sex life. She tells me things about herself. Here I am with a woman who knew me before I knew knowing oneself was a thing to do, here we are talking like women do. 

I walk home in the rain, listening to an album I discovered recently enough that it had yet to see Brooklyn through my eyes. I get a coffee and wonder when I started having one every day. The music suddenly feels all wrong and I can hear the silence that my singing or talking on the phone or television shows once filled in my parents’ houses, so I somewhat frantically switch the album to one that had seen my Brooklyn, even my Brooklyn in this light, same time of year and same weather. I stroll past the street I used to be unable to pass without snapping my head to gaze down, because a boy I thought I loved lives there. I don’t turn my head…at first. However, one’s body can never forget a habit like that, so my neck snaps without any viable consent from my brain. I can hardly see down his street because the crosswalk is so busy, but I can see myself on a city bike waving at him before I thought his eyes lit up a room, in pants that will never fit me again. 

I met up with Coco in a coffee shop that we’d sit in for hours last year. One that my foreign friends and I frequented two summers ago, one that my dad and uncle used to rave about before it became mine. I almost forget I have to jump up and down and feign shock when we embrace, because I felt as though I’d been here for the leaves changing. I had fallen back into it so quickly. Nothing has changed, I just can’t fit into my pants anymore. 

We went to my house. I lived somewhere else for a while, but President Street saw me become myself. It saw me when I ensured that I fit into the pants that I can’t get beyond my thighs now. It saw me when I stopped looking and stopped fitting. It saw me excited in the mirror when I fit again after a summer where I moved so fast and did so much that I didn’t need to make any effort for my pants to fit at all. I’m sad this time, because I think the cool sailor pants that I bought at fourteen won’t ever fit again. I loved those pants, I even got them tailored for more money than I paid for them. No matter how bittersweet, I think my hips are here to stay. 

Coco showered in my shower like it was her own. One time I got too drunk and high on my crazy Zoloft dosage of 2021 and Coco and Beza had to bathe me. I used to be really sad. I got Coco a towel from my dad’s room. Arla opens my door because it’s unlocked because Pitzer is not New York and I leave my door wide open and hang prized possessions on my porch but I’m bad with transition and I forgot that New York isn’t Pitzer. I had to force myself to jump around again, because I forgot again that I don’t fit into my pants anymore. We sit on my bathroom floor and talk like we always have. 

Suddenly we’re all trying to squeeze under my umbrella while walking to dinner. We order a bottle of red wine so we can have a guilt free cigarette after our meal. The woman studies my fake ID for too long and she knows it is not real, and I know that she knows, and she knows that I know that she knows, but she gives it back and brings us our wine. The lighting is warm and the wine makes my belly warm and it’s so much warmer inside than it is in California because we’ve just escaped the cold rain. 

Beza comes a couple hours later. Dinner was long. We talked about politics. Beza comes and we keep sitting on my bathroom floor, laughing like we’re still going to eat lunch in the cafeteria in two days. I suddenly notice the puffiness of my cheeks as my back is hitting the wall and my butt feels the cool tiles through the thin fabric of only pants at home that fit me. I wonder if these girls I love are noticing the fullness of my face. We laugh and tell Beza that we talked about politics over wine at dinner. I can’t believe we talked about politics at dinner, it’s so absurd, like we’re playing the part of matured. 

We meet up with Breyten and Baurice and head to a bar on Smith Street. Baurice was the last boy I had a sleepover with before penises and vaginas simply couldn’t be near each other because the magnetic pull was too strong, apparently. We slept in the circus tent that still lives in my dad’s closet because I want my kids to have it.

 I posted a picture of the boys and my girls. Our middle school PE teacher liked it, despite the cans of beer so obviously in hand. We’re old enough for the teachers that didn’t let us curse to like photos of us with such atrocities to innocence as beer. My girls are en route to womanhood and the boys that didn’t get tall until recently are on the road to being men. I have hips and my friends and I drink wine instead of just taking shots. I’m proud of the curve of my hips as they stretch away from my waist and I don’t hate when my stomach rolls when I sit and I love who I am. I just didn’t want to see a number. I sure as hell did not want to see a number on a scale where my doctor turned it to kilograms every time before she weighed me, because she somehow knew I didn’t want to see a number that would decimate my self image immediately. Dearest Pants, I will miss you and your company. I will miss the way you hugged my body. I wish you could see me into the future of my femininity and I hate to say it, but I fucking hope you don’t because I certainly don’t miss forcing myself to fit. Dear Hips, welcome—I guess. My love for you is still begrudging, but you can’t ask me for more because at least I’m semi willing to say goodbye to my pants.