Denim Denouncement from George F Will

[mcflip]

Have fun with this one:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/15/AR2009041502861.html

Demon Denim

By George F. Will

Thursday, April 16, 2009

On any American street, or in any airport or mall, you see the same sad tableau: A 10-year-old boy is walking with his father, whose development was evidently arrested when he was that age, judging by his clothes. Father and son are dressed identically -- running shoes, T-shirts. And jeans, always jeans. If mother is there, she, too, is draped in denim.

Writer Daniel Akst has noticed and has had a constructive conniption. He should be given the Presidential Medal of Freedom. He has earned it by identifying an obnoxious misuse of freedom. Writing in the Wall Street Journal, he has denounced denim, summoning Americans to soul-searching and repentance about the plague of that ubiquitous fabric, which is symptomatic of deep disorders in the national psyche.

It is, he says, a manifestation of "the modern trend toward undifferentiated dressing, in which we all strive to look equally shabby." Denim reflects "our most nostalgic and destructive agrarian longings -- the ones that prompted all those exurban McMansions now sliding off their manicured lawns and into foreclosure." Jeans come prewashed and acid-treated to make them look like what they are not -- authentic work clothes for horny-handed sons of toil and the soil. Denim on the bourgeoisie is, Akst says, the wardrobe equivalent of driving a Hummer to a Whole Foods store -- discordant.

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Long ago, when James Dean and Marlon Brando wore it, denim was, Akst says, "a symbol of youthful defiance." Today, Silicon Valley billionaires are rebels without causes beyond poses, wearing jeans when introducing new products. Akst's summa contra denim is grand as far as it goes, but it only scratches the surface of this blight on Americans' surfaces. Denim is the infantile uniform of a nation in which entertainment frequently features childlike adults ("Seinfeld," "Two and a Half Men") and cartoons for adults ("King of the Hill"). Seventy-five percent of American "gamers" -- people who play video games -- are older than 18 and nevertheless are allowed to vote. In their undifferentiated dress, children and their childish parents become undifferentiated audiences for juvenilized movies (the six -- so far -- "Batman" adventures and "Indiana Jones and the Credit-Default Swaps," coming soon to a cineplex near you). Denim is the clerical vestment for the priesthood of all believers in democracy's catechism of leveling -- thou shalt not dress better than society's most slovenly. To do so would be to commit the sin of lookism -- of believing that appearance matters. That heresy leads to denying the universal appropriateness of everything, and then to the elitist assertion that there is good and bad taste.

Denim is the carefully calculated costume of people eager to communicate indifference to appearances. But the appearances that people choose to present in public are cues from which we make inferences about their maturity and respect for those to whom they are presenting themselves.

Do not blame Levi Strauss for the misuse of Levi's. When the Gold Rush began, Strauss moved to San Francisco planning to sell strong fabric for the 49ers' tents and wagon covers. Eventually, however, he made tough pants, reinforced by copper rivets, for the tough men who knelt on the muddy, stony banks of Northern California creeks, panning for gold. Today it is silly for Americans whose closest approximation of physical labor consists of loading their bags of clubs into golf carts to go around in public dressed for driving steers up the Chisholm Trail to the railhead in Abilene.

This is not complicated. For men, sartorial good taste can be reduced to one rule: If Fred Astaire would not have worn it, don't wear it. For women, substitute Grace Kelly.

Edmund Burke -- what he would have thought of the denimization of America can be inferred from his lament that the French Revolution assaulted "the decent drapery of life"; it is a straight line from the fall of the Bastille to the rise of denim -- said: "To make us love our country, our country ought to be lovely." Ours would be much more so if supposed grown-ups would heed St. Paul's first letter to the Corinthians, and St. Barack's inaugural sermon to the Americans, by putting away childish things, starting with denim.

(A confession: The author owns one pair of jeans. Wore them once. Had to. Such was the dress code for former senator Jack Danforth's 70th birthday party, where Jerry Jeff Walker sang his classic "Up Against the Wall, Redneck Mother." Music for a jeans-wearing crowd.)

[rnrswitch]

It's good that Will thinks we need to wear clothes depending on our social status, rather than what we feel like wearing.

Better men have worn denim, dug ditches, and mined ore, than have put on a three piece and tie and sold stock on wall street.

I wonder if George Will considers himself a Man or a "gentleman."

[Blackbeard]

I wonder if George Will considers himself a Man or a "gentleman."

george will is a bitch

[DrMoBueno]

damn conservatives and their damn culture wars.

he should spend more of his time writing another crappy baseball book for me to ignore.

[thingymajig]

It's like something that's been written by a hardcore AskAndy member.

[Bigyen]

what was george will's user name and how bad was he flamed?

[Paul T]

Does it bother you all that much? It doesn't me.

I see acres of horrible, shapeless, airbrushed denim every day, bought cheaply at some mall, and probably made and distressed cheaply somewhere in China or Indonesia by people who were paid peanuts.

On a thread here somewhere there are photos of men on their way to work, all wearing hats, aspiring to a gentle formality and I think there's something praiseworthy about that.

So, yes, I think it's possible to agree, in a hypothetical sense, that there is too much denim, made cheaply, bought without thought, around.

It's just that I reserve the right to wear it myself.

[Blacktocomm]

well he gets minus points for quoting Paul in an epistle extolling Charity. Too bad he didn't read that part and is blatantly rude to all who do not fit in his social norm.

More minus points for wearing dress clothes to a baseball game.

More minus points because after a little bit of searching I found a picture of Fred Astaire wearing Jeans

All in all no wonder why the newspapers are going broke. This is probably just some lame inflammatory article to sell papers so he can keep his job.

[DrMoBueno]

this article is everything that's wrong with the republican party.

it used to be about the freedom to live my life as i choose. now they want to micro-manage my life. down to what i can wear...

i can picture the production meeting for a segment on this topic at fox news, with these old white guys complaining about a black kid with his phat farms around his knees...

this isn't about newspapers dying. it's more about how out of date the republicans are.

[Opie]

So.. is Steve Mcqueen welldressed or should i take a new view on my dress idol?

Answer me George F. Will!

Answer me goddamnit!

[salaami]

pauls on target. there's too much bullshit denim these days. but the article was funny.

[rnrswitch]

While, I do agree with paul and Salaami about there being too much bullshit denim around, it doesn't seem like it is the "bullshit" part of it that Will is against. It seems like he is against appearing working class and denim being the embodiment of the working class. I just don't particularly like the tone he takes. It's like when people refer to not liking the hip hop culture, when they really mean to say, "I don't like black people and much associated with black people."

I would rather the world be covered in non-bullshit denim where people manufacturing the jeans get paid a living wage and the price of the denim reflects that. This true-religion-pay-workers-beans-and-charge-consumers-out-the-ass-denim has got to go. Give me some nice denim made in a factory where people get paid a "living" wage... like cone.

[klue]

all prominent patterns of dressing deserve to be abandoned. hidden weapons are indispensible in the garb of the future. suited journalists and all establishment scum shot silently, efficiently, non-chalant. leaves are the only suitable workwear. bark as armor. thorax protection made by 10345 oz. denim that creates a bulwark to resist all modern weapons of mass destruction. a mutherfuckaaaan deniimm misssile defense seeestem mann. A denim guillotine fo da suited masses. carnivorous cats ... aliens camped out wearing blue denim suits.

[raWorkshop]

Republican pundits denouncing a visual cultural cue without a thorough intellectual analysis of what's actually wrong? Mind blown.

Americans dress sloppy because we have so little facetime social interaction. If somebody looks down on you for your clothes you just walk back to your car in the fucking parking lot and go home. There are certainly bigger things wrong with America than denim, so ubiquitous that a raging critique is laughable.

[crissyw]

This article is ridiculous enough to seem almost satirical.

(A Confession: I lol'd.)

[civicex]

Hey guys, all I gotta say is this guy doesn't represent a majority of us republicans.

[rnrswitch]

Hey guys, all I gotta say is this guy doesn't represent a majority of us republicans.

Yes he does... (j/k)

[klue]

Hey guys, all I gotta say is this guy doesn't represent a majority of us republicans.

let us not forget that george bush is a cowboy

[16steps]

Denim is the infantile uniform of a nation in which entertainment frequently features childlike adults ("Seinfeld," "Two and a Half Men") and cartoons for adults ("King of the Hill").

hahahahaha

[salo]

i tried searching the internets for a picture of him wearing jeans...

:(

[rnrswitch]

The dude's a square.

[raWorkshop]

There's an indigo sniffing dog at the front of his gated community. No plebes, no jews, no jeans.