While getting ready for school shopping I wonder how many parents had conversations with kids about getting pre-washed jeans with holes already worn into them. Not long ago I observed a “really cool dude” about 30+ years old arriving for a medical appointment. He was well dressed with a chain on his belt, nice shoes, and jeans with prominent holes both above the knee and below the knee. He was accompanied by some friends, but they were no way as cool as he was
I suppose it was music performers and actors who started making it fashionable a few years back to wear clothes that were looking already worn out. Perhaps they thought it makes them look more “country” or like “poor Appalachian guy makes good.” Perhaps it was just another way of being defiant of society’s norms. After all, in our American culture, we tend to think that getting new stuff, new clothes, new cars, new smart phones, all of those new things that advertisers show us, is one way we can demonstrate our success and being smart. Wearing clothes that are faded out, pre-washed is one step, but that’s only a color choice. Buying new jeans that have holes worn in for you by a factory machine, that’s what I want to challenge.
In short, I think most of the people wearing these "ripped" jeans don’t deserve to wear them. In the real world of work and suffering, people who work hard on a farm or a construction job, or pick apples or harvest the vegetables we eat, wear their jeans until they are really worn out. Many times they wear worn out clothes with holes starting to show because they are living on very low wages. They use up every single day of wear a pair of jeans has to offer. When we see someone wearing jeans that they have worn out while working, that person deserves our respect because it is a testimony of their effort, their sweat, their suffering through long hot days.
That is why I think it’s wrong for fashionable people, or anyone else, to pay good money to buy and to wear ripped jeans. It is like mocking the working poor of our land. It is pretending to be something you are not. It is saying, “I can afford to dress down,” and be cool. It is like wearing a lie on your butt.
Now, some of you readers are not going to like my remarks because you have already invested in worn out clothes. Maybe you can sell them on Ebay and get part of your investment back. Somebody will pay good money for them! Or perhaps you can patch them with pieces from other jeans. That’s the way my Mom would have done it because we wore our clothes out honestly on the farm. Getting a new pair of jeans or overalls was a once-a-year thing, or maybe twice when you got one extra for Christmas. So that’s why I don’t like fashion jeans with holes.
OK, now I’ll try to find something Jesus said to back me up.
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Copyright 2019 Stanley Hagemeyer
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