I don't get why people are so in love with jeans. I own one pair of jeans. I have only worn one pair of jeans in the past 20 years. Not one pair at a time, mind you. One pair total. I bought them last summer. I kind of hate them. I only wear them to fit in and that makes me hate them more.
When I was in pre-school I used to love to wear sweatpants. If it were up to me, I'd wear nothing but sweatpants. I would wear nothing but the one pair of sweatpants that I liked the best. I used to spray my sweatpants with lysol rather than lose them for the ninety minutes it took for my mom to wash them. I loved sweatpants. They were comfortable. They were cozy. They were black. Full disclosure, I would also dress in all black because I thought I was a ninja. I didn’t do any ninja things, aside from wearing black, but wearing black was close enough.
Towards the end it got a little rough as the sweatpants were full of holes and my mother took a stand. I would get dressed thusly: I would put on what I thought would be appropriate for the day and pitch it to my mother who was an image consultant and would either accept or deny my outfit. It was a simple process and it worked. It still works today, except my girlfriend has taken over as threshold guardian.
One day she said no. I asked what the problem was, she said there were holes in my sweatpants. I asked for another suggestion and she suggested jeans. I protested. Jeans were notoriously incongruous, yet this was allowed? Jeans are allowed to have holes. Jeans are allowed to have holes? What kind of denim double-standard is this? What did sweatpants do to you to hold them to such impossible standards? This is a hate crime! My mom just shook her head and reminded me that I was four years old and couldn’t form clever arguments like that. I wore shorts for the rest of the year.
Reason # 1 – Jeans get special treatment.
People usually ask, when hearing about my jeans boycott, what I wore instead. As an avid golfer and wannabe punk rock kid, I wore khakis, slacks, Dickies and corduroys in different phases. Mostly I wore shorts, because I was also quite fat and with extra weight comes higher body temperature, but when I wore pants I wore the ones I mentioned above.
One thing all of those pants have in common is pockets. They all have nice, deep pockets that come in sideways and hug the sides of your legs. You can keep stuff in them. You can access them while sitting down. You can access them while walking. You can access them without having to be rigid, straight legged and you can access them without having to cock your damn arms out like some cowboy with low self esteem.
Jean pockets are poorly placed, poorly designed and poorly executed. They’re too tight, too high, too small, too up front, too narrow and too thin. Jean pockets are the Sarah Palin of pants: only there to look at and make fun of; not to be taken seriously or utilized for any natural or normal purpose.
Reason # 2 – Jeans have shitty pockets
Everyone loves jeans. Some people wear jeans every day. Everyone crosses their eyes at me when I reveal my secret like I’m crazy for not owning jeans. I am the crazy one for not liking jeans. I thought comfort was subjective. I thought America was about standing up for what you believe. I thought I could make my own decisions and as long as no harm came to anyone else, that choice would be tolerated. I thought wrong. Jeans are not a status symbol. They are more than that. If you don’t have jeans you do not exist. Jeans are that old shitty comedy movie from your childhood that you watched every day because it was the only VHS tape you had, and you think that anyone who can’t do a shot for shot remake from memory is not worth the air they displace.
Reason # 3 – Everyone has jeans and everyone who has jeans thinks everyone should have jeans.
Last summer I was in target buying socks. My girlfriend, a denim enthusiast, told me to give jeans a try. I had suffered the slings and arrows of the entirety of human civilization over the previous twenty years and was tired of it. Bums have more than one pair of jeans, she said and that did it. She bought me a pair. And I bought myself a new pair of sweatpants.
Reason # 4 – I now own jeans.
