I'm awake this late on a Thursday night, with class in the morning, because tomorrow is the day before Halloween. Every year my college has a showing of the Rocky Horror Picture Show, and tomorrow my friend and I are hitting thrift stores and then spending the evening becoming Columbia (her) and Magenta (me) and going out to shout at the screen with the rest of the Rocky Horror fans at our campus. I love crafty things and I love putting together costumes, so right now I'm like a kid on Christmas Eve; I'm so excited that I can't sleep.

It's not surprising that I love going all out for screenings of the Rocky Horror Picture Show: I grew up with the movie. My mother has been watching it every Halloween for as long as I can remember. When my brother and I were little, he would sit on my mother's lap and I would sit on my grandmother's, and they would cover our eyes and ears during the raunchy parts -- which, as those familiar with the movie know, come often. Still, we loved what we were allowed to watch. One of my earliest memories is doing the Time Warp for my grandfather in the basement of my grandparents' house when I was probably four years old. I remember, in middle school, finally being allowed to watch more than just the parts at the beginning, and being shocked at the ending. In high school, when I could watch the whole thing unedited without being scandalized, I forced my bewildered friends to watch it for the first time, with props and with dancing.

It's just a jump to the left.

There's just something about cult classics like Rocky Horror. Especially when they're as participatory as Rocky is; I dressed up as Magenta my freshman year here, when I was still timid and new, and felt awkward and ridiculous walking across campus with my rather skimpy maid's costume and huge hair, and voiced great concerns to my friends about being the only one crazy enough to dress up, but when I got there, I realized that I was far from alone. Corsets abounded, and fantastic makeup, and glitter, and brave men in stockings and heels. And when the movie started, it was clear that I was in the company of others who loved the movie as passionately as I did. Those new to the movie fumbled through the script we were given when we came in, but when I screamed lines like, "HOW STRANGE WAS IT!?" a huge part of the audience screamed with me.

Maybe it's the sense of community that comes from an event like that. Maybe we just enjoy being in the company of others who love what we love. Maybe it's because we feel more understood as human beings when others take a strange and passionate delight in a movie about cross-dressing, scantily clad, occasionally incestual aliens that celebrates sexuality, B-movies, and rock and roll all at once. Or maybe it's just so damn fun to have a reason to dress up as Riff, or Frank, or Magenta.

Whatever it is, it's completely robbing me of my ability to calm my excitement and get some sleep for my classes tomorrow.

And Women of Western New York, I want to know: What's your favorite cult movie? Is it Rocky Horror, like me? Are you a Priscilla Queen of the Desert kind of gal? Dawn of the Dead, maybe? Clerks? Or something more subtle and less well known?

Tell us about it, Janet!

I'm a curvy girl. This is a fact that I'm not ashamed of; I don't mind having hips, even in a society that has a disturbing (and, thankfully, seemingly waning) new obsession with the skinny jean. Unfortunately, the top of my head barely brushes the sixty inch mark on growth charts, and being a five foot tall woman with curves is no easy feat when it comes to shopping.

I am constantly frustrated by the lack of choices that I have when it comes to jeans. I'm a big fan of the Lucky brand, since they and other more expensive denim designers tend to have a good selection of sizes (in my very limited experience) but in this economy, especially as a student, I find it difficult to spend so much on one pair of jeans. My favorite stores lately are Gap and Express, and while they do offer a "Curvy" option, I argue that it's more of a symbolic gesture. I have ravaged Gap looking for the Curvy style, and it's hard enough to find just that, much less with the "Short" or "Ankle" qualifier attached to it. And I don't want to hem! Please don't make me hem. I see no reason that I should have to take a basic pair of jeans to a tailor or inexpertly to my sewing machine just because I'm a little bit on the short side. Express is very good with their selection of "Short" and "Tall" alike, but their "Eva" style for curvy women is available (even online!) in just one style, in two slightly different washes.

This seems like such a mistake to me. I'm sure that I am an unusual build for my height, but one of my closest friends is built exactly the same, so I know that I'm not a total anomaly. It is hardly strange to be a curvy lady in America. How, then, do the consumers justify carrying such a limited selection of choices for those of us who are well-endowed below instead of or as well as above?

Gap, for example, has a style called "Always Skinny." Really, Gap? Really? Always skinny? What kind of messages do labels like that send to women? And so many of the jeans and pants are like this. I am personally a fan of the colored denim that's out now, especially the purple and turquoise colors, but I have not seen a single pair that was not in the skinny jeans style. Is this some sort of subtle fashion elitism? If you have an ass, you cannot wear purple jeans? Perhaps this is a message that maybe only thin legs look good in colored jeans - a message that I could see possibly having some truth to it - but damn convention, I still long for deep violet denim to wear when I'm feeling particularly colorful.

Meanwhile, women with beautiful curves who should be wearing jeans that hug the hips are trying to be fashionable and are mistakenly buying and wearing skinny jeans, which is, of course, a grave mistake. And often I have heard these misguided women ridiculed for their "muffin tops" and the like that result from wearing the wrong jeans, but I feel for them; what are bigger women to do, when these are the only options presented to them? It's hardly their fault.

But maybe things are changing for the better. I was shopping at the Gap at the Boulevard Mall the other day, and meandered through what I thought to be a rather lackluster selection of quasi-seasonal clothing to find myself at the back of the store too suddenly, since I was hoping to find a good sweater there. I looked up at the back wall and saw a selection of lovely trousers, and then realized what was strange about the scene: they were labeled "curvy." I managed to find a pair that also had the "Ankle" qualifier. Needless to say, those beauties came back to college with me and I can see them from where I sit now, hanging over my desk chair, roomy in the right places and good and short, waiting to be taken out with a t-shirt and a cardigan. But what I wonder is, did I just have a stroke of good luck? Or is this a glimmer of hope, a sign that perhaps these chain megabrands that dominate our malls are realizing that their consumers, despite what is fashionable, come in a variety of shapes and sizes?

I fully submit myself to the possibility that I'm just looking in all of the wrong places. I'd like to believe that somewhere there is a magical place filled with jeans for the tall and thin and the short and curvy, both. But until I find it, I will wear my Eva Express jeans in all of the two colors that I'm allowed as a five foot tall curvy girl, and dream of purple jeans that don't threaten to rip open wide when I try and hoist them above my knees.