My pants are all too big. They hang off my hips and give me a basket crotch that is unacceptable. All of my other jeans and pants have been given away over the past two months. I’ve held onto three pairs, because I need something. They’re all very roomy and require the use of the one belt I own.

“Pamie.com,” Liz said to me the other week. “You need new jeans.”

I had just bought these jeans less than two months ago when everyone was telling me I needed new jeans. “I know,” I said. “But what happens if these get too big in six weeks again?”

“You need hot, new jeans for your hot, new ass,” she said. “It’s time for you to buy hundred dollar jeans.”

I have never spent that kind of money on denim. Actually, thinking it over, there is only one item in my closet that cost a hundred dollars and it’s the dress I bought for Omar’s wedding, which I wore to another wedding this past weekend, as well as the high tea day with Dan a few weeks ago and I think I just wore it one other time just to wear it because I won’t be happy until I’ve worn it one hundred times. The only other item that broke the hundred-dollar mark is the item I’ll be wearing when I get married.

So. Hundred dollar jeans? Come on.

But then I started thinking. Maybe I had, in fact, earned the hundred dollar jeans. It was time I gave my ass a thank you for running itself off over the past two years. Perhaps I should treat it for not having to get an assectomy two weeks ago when that doctor was worried that the staph was getting worse. And I wear jeans just about every day. Maybe hundred dollar jeans would last longer, fit better, not get all baggy after the second wearing. Maybe hundred dollar jeans wouldn’t have that damn fading under the ass cheeks that every single pair of jeans have. Maybe they wouldn’t look slightly acid washed. Maybe I’d find out what people are talking about when they say “Paper Denim and Cloth.”

Liz loves her hundred dollar jeans, so she took me to the store in Beverly Hills where she bought them.

On the table when you walk in are about thirty pairs of jeans. Each one boasts a sticker price of at least $125. Here are the sizes: 25. 26. 27. And 28.

At first you think, “Okay. My waist is that small. No problem.” Then you pick up the hundred dollar jean and see that the jean is so low-rise that it’s just about going to clear the pubes. This means that the number now doesn’t refer to your waist, but your hips.

YOUR HIPS.

“Ugh,” says SuperSkinnySalesgirl as she watches me paw through every single pair of jeans, wondering if there’s even a possiblity I was going to put my bootyliciousness into a 30. “You know who’s a 24? Brittany Murphy.”

You know who’s not just a single size bigger than Brittany Murphy? NOBODY. Starving people. Children. Saplings. People. A 24-inch hip? What does that make her waist? What does that make her? What is she?

The salesladies are convinced that I’m going to pull off a 30 in a hot way. They put me back there with a 30 and a 31.

Okay. Hundred dollar jeans, for all they cost, are seriously lacking in fabric. These jeans only came halfway up my ass, just clearing the crack, creating in my body what can only be described as a “Roll.”

“Oh, my God!” I shouted from inside the dressing room.

“Come out! Come on out! Let us see!”

The one thing I had made clear to Liz is that I hate swarming salesladies. Now I had two, with Liz standing nearby, blushing, covering her mouth with her hand.

“They look soooooo good on you,” one said to me.

“You’re a liar,” I said back.

“No, look. When I first got low-rise jeans? I thought I looked terrible in them too.”

“You can see my ass crack.”

“Yeah, but you totally get used to it. Those are super cute on you.”

I weakly pointed to this new square shape my hips had taken in order to find a place to hang over the 30-inch restriction I’d put on my pelvis. “This is not super cute,” I said, trying to hide it with the edge of my shirt.

“Aw, it really does look good on you,” she said.

Liz pointed at everything from the top of the jeans down. “This all looks really good on you.”

Crackheads. My ass was stuffed into a flat surface. And my ass? It likes to be free. It’s round and full and damn right, it’s better than y’all’s.

“I’m taking these off,” I said. I tried to sound normal, but the truth was I was humiliated. Two years of work down the drain. I tried to be another LA Woman, and here it was reminding me: “You are normal. Go back to the Gap, honey.”

“No, wait. Come look in the big mirror! You have to see how good you look.”

I was now in a full sweat, terrified, mortified, and seeing red. Other people could now see me in these jeans, these too-small jeans that would fall to the ankles of Brittany Murphy. I looked like every fashion don’t there was, and all I could think was, “I can’t believe I ever thought I was hot.”

“I look ridiculous,” I said.

“No, you really just have to get used to it,” that woman insisted.

I was flushed and sweating, covering my face.

I was infuriated with these jeans and these salesladies and this notion of what kind of body is supposed to wear these jeans. I was mad at myself for being so embarrassed. I was mad at myself for thinking I was skinny, when clearly skinny is Brittany Murphy, and I am the opposite of Brittany Murphy. I tried to remember good I looked when I wasn’t wearing the jeans. I tried to remember how I’m buying clothes in sizes smaller than I wore in high school. I tried to remember all of that, but the blood wasn’t going to my brain because it was all trapped around my ass crack.

“Please let me go change,” I asked quietly. My ass was literally getting sore. My abscess was as angry as I was.

“Oh,” the woman cooed, like she was finally getting it. “You’re not from L.A., are you? Where are you from?”

Now Liz jumped into action, grabbing my arm. “Come on, pamie.com.”

“Where are you from?” she asked again, head to the side, treating me like the clueless tourist I must be. “Are you from the midwest?”

“I’m outta here.”

I took the pants off and we left the store. Liz has apologized over three hundred times since. I haven’t found a pair of jeans that isn’t Super Low Rise, by the way. My favorite pair right now is from American Eagle, and when I went back there, they were only selling shorts and skirts for the summer.

“You just have a tall ass,” Liz concluded.

“How is that supposed to be a compliment?”

“You’re just not a Super Low Rise girl.”

“How wonderful to find out that I don’t need to spend a hundred dollars on jeans. I can go back to twenty-five bucks.”

“Please don’t hate me.”

“I don’t hate you. I hate the current state of fashion.”

I have to tell you the best part. The perfect punchline. The name of the store?

Curve.