In a long-ago lifetime when I was a staff magazine writer and editor, I did glamorous things like attend New York Fashion Week shows and climb frozen waterfalls and ride in elevators with Anna Wintour who literally never ages and interview people so pretty you wanted to punch them in the face.

Cindy Crawford was one of them.

One particularly memorable interview was for Mademoiselle. It was for the cover of some “special issue” of a nature I can no longer recall (back to school? anniversary special? THE LOVE YOUR BODY ISSUE HAHAHA?), so no expense was spared. Cindy was being photographed with Daisy Fuentes and Rebecca Romijn-then-Stamos (and can we talk about how awkward it is hanging out with a woman whose husband used to smile down at you in 2-D from above your bed throughout the majority of your teenage years?) and I was interviewing each of these specimens of perfection in turn for the corresponding story.

Daisy arrived first. She looked fresh-faced and wholesome in jeans and a hoodie, and she was the friendliest, sweetest, most down-to-earth thing you ever met, introducing herself to everyone from the guy hanging the backdrop to the Kraft food service people (“Hi, I’m Daisy!”) as if they didn’t know who she was. Rebecca arrived next, a bit of a hot mess in a messy bun and ratty sweats and shrieking about the pimple on her chin, but equally as charming as Daisy. I remember thinking, “Wow, I could totally hang out with these two. They’re just like me and my friends!” Except, you know, with a bazillion dollars and zero body fat and their own lip gloss re-applier but whatever.

Cindy was the last of the three cover models to arrive at the shoot. When she walked into that room, you could hear this giant collective gasp. I think Daisy and Rebecca even gasped. If you haven’t been in a room with her, let me enlighten you: Cindy Crawford is not beautiful. She’s stunning. Ethereal. Otherworldly. Her features are so perfect, her skin so flawless, her legs so long, you can’t help but stare and wonder how a pair of eyes, a mouth and a few limbs can be arranged so exquisitely that it’s actually inhuman. I’ll just come right out and say it: Cindy Crawford was nothing at all like me and my friends. 

ANYWAY. Cindy was wearing these super cool gray cargo pants and the fact that she could have been wearing a Ghostbusters onesie and still looked magnificent mattered not. In my head, those pants were magical.

It took me a few years AND OF COURSE SEVERAL TRIPS TO ANTHROPOLOGIE but I finally found my Cindy Crawford cargo pants.

I *may or may not* have a utility knife in my pocket.

They’re by Paperboy for Anthropologie and the front pockets–the part that ostensibly puts the “cargo” in their title–are awful and the legs are five inches too long because they were made for Cindy Crawford obviously and I really need to accept the fact that I’m not the cargo-pants type.

Or the Cindy Crawford-type, for that matter. 

XO
Jenna