A Love Letter to Old Navy’s Wide-Legged Jeans

When I walk to the train, my shadow falls wider, and I like that I’m taking up more space.

As I rounded out my twenty-ninth year, I decided to evolve my look. This decision was made painstakingly and dramatically, with lots of monologues to my friends as their eyes glazed over. I was exhausted by the tyranny of skinny jeans, the way they squeezed every centimeter of my legs yet somehow still slipped down to continuously reveal my ass crack. I wanted a new silhouette. I wanted wide-legged pants. How complicated could that be?

I am a size 18. I’ve bounced between size 16 and size 20 since I was twelve years old. I identify as fat, but as far as plus sizes go, this is the accessible side of things. The internet makes shopping for clothes easier, but buying pants online is a fool’s errand. In 2020, surely, I’d be able to try on a few pairs of pants in brick-and-mortar stores.

Maybe you’ve heard: More companies want fat people’s money now. Last spring, a friend said to me, “Did you see Anthropologie started carrying plus sizes?”

I turned quickly, snarling before I could stop myself. “They didn’t fucking want me before.”

His eyes widened. We were both shocked by my vitriol. But his statement triggered a memory: me as a teen in the sale section, trying on sunglasses as my friends exclaimed over dresses they couldn’t afford.

Replicate this experience for H&M and Hollister and American Eagle and The Gap and Forever 21 and Aeropostale and don’t even think about stepping inside Abercrombie and Fitch, because the haze of cologne hovering in front of the door actually reacts as a toxin when it contacts human fat cells. Live this experience again and again as a suburban teen who hates her body. Then imagine stepping into Old Navy, where they carry your size and don’t relegate you to a plus-sized section like the flickering basement quarantines of Sears and JC Penney.

What a relief: not just to try on clothes alongside your friends, but to try on the same clothes.

I love Old Navy. I appreciate quality basics at affordable prices. I’m comforted that they aren’t trying to impress me; they’re just trying to sell me a nice denim button-up. Not a month goes by where I don’t hum the old spoken-word performance fleece commercial like an incantation to summon more Old Navy cash: “I’m going to go, with you as my guest / with Performance Fleece, we’ll be the best dressed.”

But mostly, I love Old Navy because they carry my size.

When I started looking for pants, I reached out to my friends for advice. “Everlane,” a chorus shouted. They stop at size 16. “Try The Gap,” another said. I’d been burned by The Gap in the past, but I thought: Surely, things have changed. Lizzo is on the cover of Vogue now. Aidy Bryant is starring in her own TV show. The Gap is Old Navy’s sister, after all.

I popped into the downtown store before therapy. There they were—the wide-legged, high-waisted trousers I’d been dreaming about. I scanned the rack. 12, 14, 16—no more. I slunk into the dressing room with a pair of pants I knew wouldn’t fit, feeling my stomach lurch as I tried fruitlessly to tug them over my thighs.

The preteen who keeps a running commentary in my brain chimed up: You should have known better than to come here. You know this store isn’t for you.

When I revealed these findings, my straight-sized friends were shocked. And I was shocked in response. How could they have no idea? What a luxury, to never have to question if a store will carry your size. To walk into any store and not have to scan the labels, panicked, waiting for a cue that you’re not really welcome. And for all these years, I hadn’t been talking about it. Part of me was still hiding out in the accessories sections of the Fox Valley Mall in my Illinois hometown, not speaking up, praying that my friends didn’t notice that my body wasn’t welcome in these capitalist spaces.

Now, I say, fuck that. People should know when stores are unwelcoming to my body, as well as the bodies of my friends.

They want my money, but they don’t want me and my fat body in their stores.

The brands who’ve been patting themselves on the back for extending their sizes were no help, either. Anthropologie’s plus line is only available online and in select stores. H&M’s plus line is only available online. Madewell’s plus line is only available online. UNIQLO’s extended sizes are only available online. What I take away from this fact is: They want my money, but they don’t want me and my fat body in their stores.

When Old Navy started as a GAP Outlet in 1994, it was designed to feel like a grocery store: bright overhead lights, wide aisles for carts, winding check-out lines flanked with shelves of impulse buys. From its genesis, Old Navy was not designed to be hip or haute couture. Maybe that’s partly why I gravitate towards it. Hip, fashion-forward spaces have never invited me in.

If Old Navy had a dinner party, they would serve martinis and tuna casserole. Old Navy would invite you over to watch music videos in their parents’ wood-paneled basement. Old Navy would earnestly perform a Goo Goo Dolls song at karaoke. Old Navy has never been the cool kid, but in the end, they’re the kid I want to hang out with.

How did I survive as a fat suburban teen who somehow still loved clothes in spite of the bullshit? I thrifted, I repurposed, I learned to stencil and hem and crop. I bought staples at Lane Bryant and Torrid, even though I never quite meshed with their khaki and Rockabilly aesthetics. In college, I started shopping ASOS Curve—another online-only option. In 2013, Forever 21 actually did a good job of incorporating plus-sized lines in stores, which is great because I deserve to buy tacky trend pieces just like everyone else.

Plus, I went to Old Navy. I still go to Old Navy. And here, I have to pause to recognize that even my beloved only carries up to a size 20 in stores.

Over the summer, I was mesmerized by a chubby preteen girl in a bikini playing volleyball on the beach. I kinda felt like a creep, but I couldn’t stop staring at how she moved her body so un-self-consciously. I don’t mean she looked brave; brave implies a performance, a battle. She just looked like a body moving on a beach—but a body I was unaccustomed to seeing in movement. A body that looked like mine.

She made me remember my own middle school years, back when SWIMSUITS FOR EVERY BODY stories in Teen Vogue never included my size. Those formative years when I internalized that my body was clumsy, abnormal, not fit for public consumption. From behind my sunglasses, I watched the girl dive to bump the ball before it hit the sand, and I wondered what other bullshit I still accept without thinking.

I thought about that girl again when I started shopping for new wide-legged pants. Changing my silhouette scared me. What if the new shape of my clothes made me look dowdy, bulky, slobby? Then I realized my actual fear: What if my new pants make me look fat?

The thing is, I am fat. And none of those words are synonymous with fat.

Now, I love my fat body with such ferocity that I feel livid at the years I was told to hate it. It took so, so much work to get here. When I flop out on the beach to pose for an Instagram bikini selfie, I wonder if people know I wore shorts over my one-piece suit until I was twenty-five.

I love my back rolls. I love my fat thighs. I don’t always love my belly, but sometimes I do, and that’s enough progress that I have to give myself credit. I love wearing clothes. I love having my photo taken. I love for people to see me—all of me, my humor and my style and my body, the ways all of those things overlap. And the victory is that these things don’t feel like a big deal anymore.

The victory is that these things don’t feel like a big deal anymore.

Good relationships are about communication, so these days I try to listen to my body. I pay attention to what makes it feel good—long walks, hot baths, solo Charli XCX dance parties in my studio apartment. This is a new experience for me: feeling grounded in my physical form, deriving joy from my muscles and skin and bones and, yes, my fat. And the clothes I put on my body are a big part of that. The right outfit makes me feel like myself.

Eventually, I found my new pants at Old Navy: Wide-legged, high-waisted blue jeans that look killer with my Doc Martens. When I see my reflection in storefront windows I think: “You are almost thirty, and you are the girl of your dreams.” When I walk to the train, my shadow falls wider, and I like that I’m taking up more space.