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# Inseams
- URL: https://dianaludwick.com/inseams/
- Published: 2026-07-29T15:11:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-07-29T15:11:00.000Z
- Description: “Inseams,” a generational review of cut-off jeans, written Wednesday, July 29, 2026 poem 210 in a series of 365 poems written by Diana Ludwick in 2026. Photo: "Shortie, a Study on Inseams" by Diana Ludwick © 2026.
- Author: Diana Ludwick
- Tags: 2026 Poetry Challenge, Generational, Geriatric Millennial, Hormonal - Teenage variant, Humor, Loosely Hinged, Nostalgia, Perimenopause, Poems, AI-ed, Daisy Dukes, Fashion Reviews, Groaning Parents, High Summer, Inseam Insurgence, Inverse Inseam, IT DOESN'T MATTER WHAT YOU THINK, Jeanerational, July, Living Room Judgements, Micro Shorts, Mother-Daughter dynamics, Mothers and Daughters, Receipt, Short Shorts, Smug Teens, Summer, #Migrated-1792872215677, #wp, #wp-post, #Import 2026-10-24 20:03

I am at the age where, like Joni Mitchell,  
I've looked at jeans   
through both sides now.  
  
I can still feel the ache in my cheeks   
from grinning so hard   
the first time I'd taken a pair   
of my mom's sewing shears   
to my acid-wash 1990s jeans.  
  
Those ones that had one too many   
grass stains and blood smears   
and the gaping jawed,   
string-toothed knee holes.   
  
I'd butchered my first pair of cut-off jeans,   
under the guidance of my hovering mom.  
"Careful of your hands.  
"Cut away from your fingers,"   
her voice had called out with a weariness  
that I didn't know, really live, until now.  
  
Each twisted cotton fiber   
of that first pair of cut-offs  
stood as a hard-earned multimedia memory   
of growing up with wobbly long legs   
and with a spatial awareness   
that was, well, interactive.  
Never quite knowing where my limbs were,   
my body and my jeans bore the evidence of  
bumps and jabs from furniture corners,   
door knobs, walls and other impediments.  
  
And yet, these were not Daisy Dukes.   
A phrase I didn't even understand,   
because I wasn't allowed   
to watch Dukes of Hazard.   
But I inferred this to mean, Scandalous.   
Unallowed. Verboten.   
  
As I grew, I became semi-detached   
and quasi-funded,   
ambling through the local mall with my bestie,   
hitting up Contempo Casuals   
for their "2 for $35!" short-short sales.  
And this is where I began   
to catalogue the sighs of my parents.  
  
I'd run from the parked car,   
engine still rumbling, up to my room,   
clutching soft plastic drawstring retail bags.  
I'd emerge moments later wearing   
low-waisted, high-legged   
factory-made "cut-off" jean shorts.  
  
I would rush down to the living room,   
do a twirl, the linear sticker on my hip   
with size number glinting   
under the shine from the table lamp.   
  
"Those are too short, Di.   
"Do you plan to go in public with those?"  
"You look ridiculous,"   
My dad coached from the couch.  
  
"You have a 35" inseam leg, Di.  
"You cannot wear something that short.   
"It is out of proportion,"   
My seamstress mother intoned,   
throwing fashion law my way.  
  
I'd rolled my eyes and stomped,  
and rubber-band *hmmphed* my loose limbs up the stairs.   
But I got to keep them,   
and I wore the heck out of them.  
  
And my legs kept growing  
while the inseams got shorter.  
  
Next it was Soffe shorts   
for cheer practice,  
waistband rolled thrice   
over the thick white elastic  
hitched up a little, too,  
for good measure.  
  
Then it was the   
"I'm getting my body back!"   
moment after childbirth,   
where an otherwise reasonable-length   
pair of jean cut-offs from Nordstrom Rack  
met my superfluous roll or two.  
of the thigh-high cuff.  
  
But now.   
Now I am the tired mom.  
  
And I see my barely teen daughter  
come drifting down the stairs,   
cheeks lodged high   
atop her zygomatic arches,   
her spirits as lifted.  
  
I am the one looking across   
at the stair landing,  
taking in the spry, calculating teen  
who now stands over me.  
  
And she beams   
her unusually happy face our way,   
toward her Dad and me,  
blinding us with her joy,   
as she swivels in jeans   
that I can only describe   
as AI-ed to her body.  
  
I am the one,   
vulnerable on the couch,  
my face falling   
with poorly-hidden feelings.  
  
I open my mouth, I close it.  
I try to think of the right thing,   
the kind thing,   
the correct thing to say.  
  
This is what comes out:  
"If you are buying shorts,  
then they need to come   
with a net positive inseam.   
"Those have a inverse inseam -  
they have an *absent* inseam."   
  
Her rainbow face clouds over  
like a surprise summer storm,   
darkness and angles set in.  
MOMMMM she spits.   
*I'M PAYING,*   
IT DOESN'T *MATTER*   
WHAT YOU *THINK*.  
  
I inhale knives,   
press my eyes closed.  
  
"All I'm asking for is *two* inches or more, total."   
I say, in what I hope is a rational,   
calling-in kind of delivery.  
  
"And the inseam on this pair,   
well it goes *UP* not down your leg."  
  
Tornado warning   
goes to Watch status.  
In her microexpressions,   
I see her weighing   
whether to lunge at me   
and go through life motherless.  
After too long a moment of contemplation,   
her face smooths.  
  
"It's OK.   
"*Dad* said I could keep one pair.   
"And this is the longer one, *so*."   
  
She smirks, turns on her heel,   
and jiggles her exposed derrière   
up the flight of oak  
to separate herself   
from my forming rebuttal.  
  
I fold my head  
into my open palms,  
massage my fraying, greying eyebrows.  
*MPH-MYYYY-GOD*   
I exhale like a failed mantra.  
  
As I breathe in deeply,   
I catch the whisps of her   
under-breath commentary   
from the second floor landing:  
"Good thing you didn't see the receipt;  
the jeans rang up as '*micro shorts!*'"   
  
She cackles.  
Her door slams.  
  
I have seen both sides, now.  
Inseam insurgence,   
it's jeanerational.