No. 016: Bottoms.

I said what I said.

[This, of course, is a story about pants.]

Does anyone know what pants we’re supposed to wear now? It used to be simple. “Jeans and a cute top” used to mean something. But the past fifteen years haven’t been kind to us Millennial women and our whiplashed lower halves.

We enjoyed a couple years of peace after the Evangelical Yoga-Pants Wars fizzled out in the mid-2010s, but soon a new authority arose: Gen Z, who demanded we lay our skinny jeans on the pyre. Initially I recoiled, but eventually I came to appreciate the transition as a movement toward greater freedom. There were so many options—boyfriend cut, wide leg, mom jean, raw hem—and it was my understanding that any of them were acceptable as long as they left us feeling stylish and empowered.

But now they’re telling us that high waist is over, cropped jeans are over. I can no longer keep track of what’s now over, and what, if anything, is still in. At this rate, by 2027 we’ll be right back to skinny jeans. Or perhaps the trad wives will win and we’ll revert to skirts.

Friends, I’m giving up on striving to abide by the rules. Maybe that’s a blessing of getting older. “Cool” is off the table a priori, so no one should blame us if we quit trying. At some point, who knows, perhaps our fashion faux pas will even be seen as endearing?

So yes, I’ve officially tapped out of the race for trendy pants. But that doesn’t mean I’m indifferent toward my waist-down style. To the contrary, in December I decided that 2025 would be my Year of the Bottoms. Only this time, I plan on doing it my way.

I’ve been a stay-at-home mom for eight years, and one of my favorite perks of this occupation is that it allows me to dress for comfort. It should come as no surprise, therefore, that I have spent the vast majority of my waking hours over the past decade suited up in black leggings. I’ve worn through multiple copies of the same exact pair: they’re made of jersey, which I find to be a little more forgiving than the typical spandex, and I always order them one size up from what the size chart prescribes for me, for the sake of that little extra give. I wear them on repeat until they’re visibly dirty, then switch to my heathered grey leggings (which I don’t like quite as much since they make me feel like an Irish wolfhound) for a day while I do the wash. Rinse and repeat.

On the whole, this routine has served me pretty well. I don an oversized shirt, and with my skinny, black legs poking out from underneath I feel like a perky, little sandpiper hopping along the beach. The thing about leggings, though, is that when I’ve maximized my comfort at the expense of sophistication, I find myself more readily settling for what’s comfortable in other areas of life. Who wants to push for excellence when the fabric surrounding your legs is actively pulling you back in toward yourself? I just want to sit on the couch and scroll on my phone with a bowl of Cheez-Its.

No shame in couches or scrolling (and certainly not in Cheez-Its), but when the habit becomes engrained, it starts to feel a little gross. Therefore, at the start of the new year, I decided I needed new pants—pants that would spur me to rise to the occasion. After significant searching, I finally thrifted a pair that was calling my name—clean, classy, cotton. And with a drawstring waistband, because, well, I do think I deserve some comfort.

Younger generations might spurn my pants because they’re high-waisted and cropped. Older generations might spurn them because they’re white, which I’m guessing means I shouldn’t wear them after Labor Day or after the okra harvest, or something like that. But, again, I’m done with the rules, and I like these pants!

The first time I wore them, I paired them with a navy, thick-knit sweater with white, horizontal stripes.

“So when are you going sailing?” asked my husband, eyebrows raised, smile bemused.

“You don’t understand,” I told him. “If I look more elegant, I’ll trick myself into acting more elegant-ly. It’s genius.”

Granted, I was eating my words a couple hours later when I was downing a sandwich and kept dropping crumbs onto myself and onto the floor. I am a categorically clumsy person, and I suppose new pants can only get me so far.

But on the whole, I can confirm that my fancy pants are doing their job. They make me feel a little like Audrey Hepburn. (Should I change my middle name to Golightly?) They make me feel like I’m on a movie set, or like I live in an Italian villa. They make me feel like the mundane trappings of my daily life are a little more significant than I give them credit for. And they make me feel like it’s worth showing up to my days and to my relationships with enthusiasm, with tact, and with excellence. They give me the motivation to be something closer to the person I want to be.

There is a moral to this story, and it is literally this: Go buy yourself some good pants! Not the pants that TikTok told you to buy. Not the pants your mother-in-law expects you to wear to Sunday dinner. Pants that are you. Pants that remind you that no matter how small you seem against the backdrop of the universe, your life is still a miracle and a good story in the making, and it’s worth showing up for. You deserve it, so long live cute bottoms.