Shorts for When Your Legs Are Not Sticks

Not to Catfish you guys or anything…but…I am not Alexa Chung.

I know. Just calm down and relax.

God bless Alexa, though, and her legs that run the length of the Nile, and her thighs that could cause my own elbows to weep. If had her legs I’d probably forgo pants altogether and instead would exist solely in my underwear bottoms.

A few friends of mine are blessed with such gams — if they weren’t I’d probably assume Chung’s were a beautiful myth, birthed from the mind of someone so offended by bagels that they created an appendage-deity to trick girls into shying away from poppy seed heaven. But these long genetic wonders exist in real life, connected to the torsos of my girlfriends who only do squats when they drop something.

Me, on the other hand. Me, not so much. I’m short, which is cool, and my thighs mean business — a fact that I’ve come to terms with mostly because without them I don’t know what would hold up my butt. And I do workout, and sometimes I take the stairs instead of having a coma, but there are certain moments in every woman’s life where she has to look in the mirror and say, “regardless of gym time, fill-in-the-blank-style is not for me.”

That’s not to say don’t flaunt what your momma give you.

But it does mean know your body. Know your shape, know what works, and then learn how to adapt the look you’re going for into one that makes sense for you. This summer, for example, I’ve finally realized that instead of lamenting about my thighs’ relentless demands to exist, I’m going to accept that denim thongs are not my friends.

But you know what are?

Wide-legged cutoffs with the chop on an angle.

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And skirted shorts. Surfer shorts. Anything to give the illusion of an A-line or boyline, with at least an inch of space required between thigh and hem.

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If there’s a high waist, great. If the hip is dropped low, cool. Yes please to pleats and quasi-athletic cuts. But what me and my thighs definitely need in order to exist in harmony is enough room to make like Sally O’Malley and kick, stretch, kick. That’s all we ask.

Now who wants a bagel?