I talk about my time wearing pants like Rose recalls her time on the Titanic: distant memories that ended in tragedy.

Through middle and high school, my personal uniform consisted of jeans and band T-shirts, of the emo/pop-punk genre (shout-out to Dashboard Confessional), with black Converse sneakers or checked Vans slip-ons. I had a very specific, ready-for-Warped Tour vibe. Even though I wore them pretty much every day, jeans were never easy to find for me: I have always struggled with my weight, stopped growing vertically at 5’1”, have an extremely long torso and short legs (24” inseam!), and a pretty flat butt—so, I didn’t have a ton of options in the days before online shopping. Once I found a pair I liked, I bought half a dozen, just in case they ever stopped making them.

The last jeans I bought, probably in 2007, were an early iteration of Old Navy’s rockstar skinny jeans (the cropped version, with zippers at the bottom, hit my ankle perfectly), since it was one of the only places in my small upstate New York hometown that made larger sizes. I’ve always worn an 18 or 20, and as much as the options for larger sizes have modernized, back then I dreaded only being able to shop at dedicated plus-size retailers.

My boycott of pants happened gradually—I can’t pinpoint the day that I stopped wearing jeans for good, but it was about a decade ago. I do remember that on one particularly frigid day in Plattsburgh, New York (the northern town where I went to college), talking to one of my friends about it. “You know what I hate about pants?,” I began. The reasons included: how denim gets incredibly cold against your skin and stays cold even long after you’ve gotten into the warmth of a dorm room with an overactive radiator; how the material seemed to stiffen when the temperature dropped, as if I had stuck them inside a freezer; how, when I wore them, I would often have a clear outline of the lower line of my stomach and what I felt to be a slight-to-prominent muffin top at the waistband, which made me feel self-conscious.

First, I swapped the jeans for leggings—a shift I made mostly because of comfort, but also because I could find leggings that would hike up over my belly button and smooth things down in a way that was different than Spanx or control-top tights. (I wore long shirts and tunics to cover myself all the way to my crotch—I’d never want to emphasize my weight, or an accidental camel toe—and would wear my jeans well above my belly button, even though they were made to be low-rise.) I started buying more and more long shirts with cinched waists, eventually moving onto dresses, one or two dresses at a time. Within the year, basic T-shirt dresses and simple skirts had taken over my closet.

Over the years, I’ve experimented with more patterns (I love florals now) and styles (midis work as maxis on me and help me look taller), and eventually got rid of all my jeans. I feel more confident, professional, and stylish in dresses, and love that I can control the way my body looks more. I haven’t owned a pair of pants with a zipper and button—only five identical pairs of trousers from Lane Bryant that I liked a while back and bought extras of on sale as backups, which I only wear when it’s really cold and snowy

I started reconsidering my unofficial ban on pants when I discovered I loved the way I looked in jumpsuits (specifically, the ones that cinch at the waist, and are cropped to be petite-friendly.) Around the same time, I began noticing fun-patterned trousers and embroidered denim on strangers on the subway, right as major brands like Madewell and LOFT began expanding into larger sizes. I decided I would take the plunge back into pants after a decade-long sabbatical. But that required research.

I have to admit that the process of trying on at least 40 pairs of pants that I called in or bought, in various sizes, made me want to quit before I really even started. It was easy to get frustrated with the nuances of sizing—some were way too small on me in my usual size 18, and even in 20, because most of my weight is in my stomach, but then way too big in the thighs and butt when I tried a 22—but I eventually discovered that, in most of these stores, I was a 20 petite, short, or extra short (thank you, Torrid!), with some bottoms fitting better overall at a 22.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve worn pants almost every day to the office (!), and gotten more compliments about my outfits than I have in the two years I’ve worked there. The ones I love are so comfortable that they do feel similar to leggings: soft, high-waisted, and stretchy enough to move around in them without them falling down. I still haven’t overhauled my closet to have enough tops to go with my new jeans, but, again, it’s a process.

Here’s the part of my journey where I pay it forward: In my arduous (and still ongoing) search, I found 14 pants that work for me, a plus-size petite woman who likes a fitted ankle that can be tucked into a large collection of ankle boots. But many of them also come in regular and long sizes, so I hope this helps you find the pants of your dreams. Check ’em out.

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