It's not fat, it's muscle...

We all know the oh-so-flattering words: cankles, thankles, tree-trunk legs. I could go on and on. No girl wants to have fat legs, admit it. So when I reached the age where I started wearing fashionable knee high boots, I realized I was doomed. I was a girl with thick legs. Let me just stop you before you start conjuring up a mental image of just how I look.

It was in high school that I realized something was up. I'm 5'7", have been forever it seems. In my teenage years, I had a metabolism of the freaking Energizer bunny. I was around 90 pounds. At that height, it's not an attractive look but I was eating enough to fulfill the varsity football team so it's not like I was trying to look like Kate Moss, a la the '90's. I began to realize that while I was probably the skinniest girl in my high school, my legs were not. Or rather, my calves weren't. But being the smart girl I was, I realized that because I was so freaking skinny, my legs were just all muscle...not fat. Hey, no high school girl (or woman in general) wants to think about any part of her body being fat. But while I was glad my legs were just muscular and not fat, it still posed a problem when it came to wearing the knee high boots I started coveting in college.

The problem was they wouldn't go around my calves. And it's not like you can go walking around with your knee high boots only zipped up halfway. I doubt that's a trend that will ever stick. Apparently most boots are made for girls with legs of a 10 year old. Me, I've got Gerda the Swedish Lumberjack's legs. Lucky me. But in all honesty, I don't really think about it that often. Until a couple months ago when I was in pursuit of some new riding boots to wear horseback riding. I'll tell ya right now that riding boots are made for the girls with Ethiopian legs. Let me tell ya, it's kinda embarrassing to be 5'7" tall, a size 4 and have to look for boots that are either Wide or Extra Wide. I managed to find some boots (wide, thank you) and it reminded me of the last time I bought riding boots and The Incident. Yes, there was an incident.

Back in 2002, I decided I wanted to pick up riding horses again. So off I went in search of some riding boots online. I found the same brand and style I'd worn as a kid and thought, these worked great when I was young so they must work great now! Ahem. The boots arrived and I tore into them in the middle of the living room; pulled up my pant legs and started to pull them on. As I'm pulling them on, they start getting really snug around the calves. I start seriously struggling to get them on. And by struggling, I mean grunting, groaning, yelling, and probably some swearing. As I'm burning hundreds of calories doing this, a tiny thought pops into my head: stop killing yourself dummy...they don't fit. But no, I pushed on. And finally! Finally I got them on. And they didn't fit. They were huge around the ankle and my foot was slopping around inside. Not exactly what you want when you're trying to control a horse with your legs and feet. Figures. So back on the floor I went to pull them off. It was then I realized we had a problem. They wouldn't budge. Apparently a vacuum was created because of how snug they were around my calf so the harder I pulled, the tighter they became. It was like one of those stupid Chinese finger traps you messed around with as a kid. I grab the ankle and start yanking, twisting, anything I can think of to loosen the boot's killer grip. I had my leg in an angle that usually only babies can pull off. I even considered taking a pair of scissors to the boot to get it off; that seemed the only possible option left to me. (Mind you, my roommates were gone so I was doing this alone.) After an HOUR of torture, I finally got the boot off and spent the next 10 minutes recovering on the floor.

So, while most girls don't have to worry about if a boot will fit over their well endowed legs, I do. I can't wear jeans under my Uggs, I have to pull my jeans off by the ankles first and my riding boots have to have the zipper up the back. But I guarantee these legs will give a nasty kick if messed with!