Clothes that Make a Statement...That We'd Have to Bleep Out

This site is about to get a little blue. Brace yourselves; I’m going to tell you where you cannot wear jeans. I can already hear your indignant scoffing and you can just save it because I’m not having it. Spending $200 on indigo-dyed cotton does not make you look rich and it does not make you classy. It does make you a sucker. And I have absolutely no idea why being a sucker should qualify you for entry into the last bastions of civilized society like the opera, or a fancy restaurant, or a house of worship, or your great-aunt’s funeral.

On one level, I’m complaining because I don’t want to have to look at you in all your muffin-topped glory while I’m trying to pry my $40 worth out of the business end of a lobster claw. Most people have no conception of what they look like to others and most people wear jeans too often, which begs the question, did the fun-house mirror come with the jeans or is it just my good fortune that you happen to own both? Likewise, Gd may not care what you wear to commune with a greater power, but I would rather not spend the hour seeing you constantly adjust yourself in the next pew, so if you’d be kind enough to wear something that involves folding your hands neatly in your lap, maybe both our prayers could be answered.

Even more than the fact that your sartorial impropriety is an eyesore to the general public, there is something sinister which transforms this indiscretion from a fashion faux pas into outright violation of your obligations under our social compact. By wearing denim without regard to time, place, or occasion, you are sending a signal to the world that this gathering is no more important to you than loafing around on your sofa watching a NASCAR re-run from 1997. True as this may be, it is rude to flaunt it in others’ faces. Those little old ladies did not spend fours hours in a salon gettin their hair did just so you can roll straight in from plowing the back 40 with a toothpick hanging out the side of your disrespectful mouth. Which brings us to the second point you will try to make in the midst of your self indulgent whining. “Why you gotta narc [do the kids still say this?] on my good time? Why can’t you just let me be who I am?” Well if who you are is a self-centered slob, then be my guest, just be yourself in private, or in a saloon, or in Canada.

If I haven’t given you reason enough to buy a pair of real pants, consider the fate of Britney and Justin. After stepping out in the best blue-jean patches that could be sewn together by third-world refugees living in a garage in east LA, this May-June romance wound up on the same trash heap of cultural scraps that produced the outfits they were wearing. So the moral of the story is, if you don’t want to end up 40 pounds heavier and back in the double-wide where you started, let’s show a little decorum in public.