When people think of wardrobe malfunctions, they usually think of people who wear skimpy outfits or who wear bold fashion statements. They never think of me, someone who on multiple occasions have been called “mom” due to my modest, yet basic stylistic choices. So how could someone like me have had a wardrobe malfunction? Is it because of my secret alternate personality of not being as modest as I seem? Or could it be because my friends are calling me a different type of “mom”? The answer is neither. The only “high risk” clothing I ever wear are leggings. I myself am a legging connoisseur. At one point in my life I only owned leggings of different thickness and shades of color. Jeans were off limits to me because I honestly thought I wouldn’t fit them. Instead, I would see myself wearing one pair of leggings during the day, only to change into another pair for my pajamas at night. That’s why in my junior year of high school, something inside me changed when my trust for the thin piece of fabric that held everything together backfired on me.
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The Backstory
Sometime in January of 2017 my mom and my sister went back to visit relatives in China. On the way, I asked them to pick up more pairs of leggings and socks because they were significantly cheaper than the ones in America and of equal quality—or so I thought. During their stay, my mom sent me a funny text about how one of the seams from a pair of leggings burst while my sister was wearing it, I sent her back a “lol” and continued on with my day.
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The Disaster
It felt like a regular morning, I would get ready for class at 8 and meet with my friend to walk to school. It wasn’t until I got to my school while I was waiting for the elevator that I saw a very noticeable split on my leggings, that was the size of an index card on the side of my left calf. My first reaction was confusion. Why didn’t I notice this split when I was putting on my shoes this morning? My next reaction was sheer panic as I thought to myself, this is the exact pair of leggings my sister tore in China. What was it doing in America? More specifically, why wasn’t this thrown away already? So how did a well rounded person like me, who everyone likes to call “mom” handle this situation? I’d like to split my reaction into two parts:
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1. Hysteria
Whenever I went into classes, I would immediately go to my friends and point it out before they could notice it. I would casually laugh it off and say, “Hey look at my pants, I don’t know how it ripped, so crazy right?” and they would be forced to go along with my overly exaggerated enthusiasm. I would laugh and they would laugh too and say, “Haha that’s so weird, you’re so weird Joyce.” Perhaps they were subtly insulting me, but nonetheless casually joking about my misfortune ended any possible discussion about it, which was fine by me. By telling them of my mishap first, I wouldn’t feel as ashamed if my friends were to point it out, putting us both in awkward positions. If they were to tease me about it, at least we could do so together.
The reason why I was hysteric was also due to my partial disbelief that while there was a sizable hole on my leggings, I could feel more holes beginning to appear. Every step had to be calculated so the hole wouldn’t stretch into a bigger one. I wore my jacket the whole day hoping it would at least cover my rear end.
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2. Denial
To this day, whenever I think about what happened, I completely dissociate from that event. I went home to discover many new holes that formed on those leggings that day. Perhaps I’m too embarrassed to even think of what my other classmates think of me. Nevertheless it happened, I moved on, and am still in disbelief that something so unexpected could happen to someone as careful as me. Moral of the story is: Don’t let your sister go to China.
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