Apr 20, 2018 4 min read

There’s a problem with all these TV commercials that show smiling, well-groomed women happily feeding breakfast to large broods of compliant children. And it’s not that they expect us to believe that children aren’t surly in the morning or that mothers with that many children have their makeup and hair done at that hour.

It’s that these commercials are ignoring the reality of stretchy pants.

The women in those commercials – as well as mothers on most TV shows – are wearing real pants that zip up. They are pants that require more than a single hopping motion to put them on. They are pants into which are tucked shirts that have buttons.

I’ve been out here in this motherhood world a long time and I’m here to tell you, those commercials are fiction – fantasy concocted by skinny Hollywood wardrobe people.

The truth is we all wear stretchy pants. I like to call mine yoga pants, a moniker that lends cool “athleisure” credibility to what are really just wads of cotton/spandex fabric. When I moved my clothing from the old house to the new one, I counted no fewer than 18 pairs of black yoga pants.

“Time to thin the herd,” said the farmer as he hauled another basket up the stairs. But I’m not parting with any of them. My favorite yoga pants are from the J.Jill store, and they stopped making them last year. Had I known, I would have bought another dozen pair. The ones I have must last me the rest of my life so, no, I am not tossing any of them.

We’ve become a stretchy-pant nation. It’s probably part of the overall relaxing of our lives. Many of us don’t dress up any more for work, or for church. When gurus starting telling us it’s not what’s on the outside that matters, we took it to heart. Have you been on an airplane lately? To capitalize on the pajama esthetic of airline travel, companies are making entire lines of stretchy travel clothing.

This makes me wonder what I wore before they invented spandex. Did I scamper home from high school to remove my bra and change into baggy jeans? I’m pretty sure I just remained in the clothes I wore to school that day. How I survived five years of college and graduate school without soft, floppy pants is a mystery now.

Equally as vexing is the thought that for decades of my career, I wore pantyhose every day. On the hottest summer days, I ran around with a microphone and stood in front of cameras in pantyhose, heeled pumps, a skirt, a blouse and a tailored jacket. The thought of it makes me squirmy and sweaty now.

At book club the other night we were talking about ways to keep deer away from our gardens, and someone suggested hanging hair clippings in pantyhose around the plants. None of the six of us could come up with a pair of pantyhose for this purpose. It had been that long.

Although ubiquitous, stretchy pants are apparently considered inferior attire. On the show “What Not to Wear,” the stylists would chastise their clients, telling them it was improper and sloppy for grown women to go out in public in yoga pants.

“Your pants must have a zipper and a snap,” they would say.

And I would harrumph at that. I have pants with zippers and snaps, and when I take them off at the end of the work day, the outline of the zipper and snap is carved into my flesh.

After all those years of wearing pantyhose, I think I deserve better than that.

Beth Dolinar can be reached at cootiej@aol.com.