TUALATIN, OR — In a shocking display of emotional choreography and predetermined self-loathing, 34-year-old Heather Cline asked her boyfriend for the 497th time if her jeans made her look fat, despite having already rendered a silent, irrevocable verdict of “yes” the moment she buttoned them.
“I just wanted to see what he would say,” said Cline, staring directly into the mirror as if waiting for it to issue a formal apology. “Obviously they make me look like a bloated water balloon filled with despair, but I needed his input so I could ignore it.”
Cline, who had reportedly tried on three different pairs of jeans before settling on the one that “offended her least,” staged the question with surgical precision—emerging from the bedroom with exaggerated nonchalance, spinning once under harsh bathroom lighting, and landing the line with all the force of a federal subpoena.
Her boyfriend, 35-year-old David Wren, responded with what sources are calling “a textbook maneuver,” offering an enthusiastic, “You look amazing, babe,” followed by what he believed was the appropriate amount of eye contact and facial sincerity.
“It was a trap,” Wren later confirmed. “The jeans didn’t matter. The lighting didn’t matter. Reality didn’t matter. She was already mad at them—and now she’s mad at me for not being mad at them, too.”
Family sources say this is not the first time Cline has initiated what experts refer to as “the denim inquisition,” a recurring ritual where compliments are accepted exclusively as insults wearing disguises.
“Last time, she asked if her yoga pants made her look ‘weirdly short,’ and when I said no, she googled ‘am I delusional’ for 40 minutes,” Wren added, visibly shaken.
At press time, Cline had changed into sweatpants and announced she was “just not feeling cute today,” while simultaneously opening a bottle of wine and daring anyone in the room to disagree.
