HOLEY

 Holey, holey, holey—such is the denim jeans fad we've had way too long. It amazes me how a piece of clothing is deliberately “distressed” to raise its “style appeal” (and price). I've learned distressed denim goes back to the “punk” movement of the 1970s when torn pants and jackets expressed “punk rock” anger toward society. Many accessorized their “rebel” fashion with safety pins and slogans. By the late eighties, with the emergence of hard rock/heavy metal music, the protest fashion continued as a political statement.

Jeans have come a long way since the mid- 1880s, when businessman Levi Strauss and tailor Jacob Davis found twilled cotton could become a hardy fabric for work pants. Metal rivets helped hold the thick fabric together. It was just what rough-and-tumble workers of that era needed—be they farmers, laborers, and even gold-diggers!

As the lowly work pants evolved into denim jeans “fashion” in the next century, there came so-called "must-have" designer brands featuring stonewashed, acid-washed, ripped, skinny legs, and tapered ankles. The 1990s saw baggy jeans. The early 2000s (oh, shield my eyes), the low-cut ones. 

So where am I going with this? Maybe my concern that the “grunge” and “acid rock” eras have infiltrated our present-day culture with more than all their “anti” messages. I ask why—in a land where there is so much natural beauty—the clothing of its inhabitants should be so...tattered. And that the “tattering” commands a higher price!

In Bible times, both men and women wore simple tunics with belts and shawls. Yet there was a sense of beauty for clothing. The busy “Virtuous Woman” of Proverbs 31 was commended for her thrift and home-sewn fashion sense (“fine linen and purple”). As “fashion” became a status symbol, early Christians needed counsel about the secular culture's emphasis on fancy braided hairdos, excessive jewelry and showy clothes. The apostle Paul offered a countercultural standard: “I want women to dress modestly with decency and propriety... with good deeds, appropriate for women who profess to worship God” (1 Timothy 2:9-10).

Culture is a fluid thing. We've come a long ways from the era of gold miners donning sturdy denim overalls while they swished their pans of pay dirt in a stream. Or farmers, slugging through the daily, dirty work of crops and animals. Or mill workers in gritty factories. They mended clothes to help them last. They certainly didn't intentionally “distress” them with bleach or scissors!

I'm aware that the Christian community embraces many opinions for clothing standards. What bothers me is a cultural trend birthed in such twisted places as the “punk rock” era, that scoffs at a divine plan of beauty and order, promoting fabric messages of ruin.

Do I own “distressed” jeans? Yes, and no. I have some way-too-old “yard-work” jeans with frayed creases that I mend with iron-on patches before they become embarrassing. But I only wear them in the yard, never in public. As I kneel in dirt with claw and trowel to care for our yard, I think how the God who arrayed the earth with astounding natural beauty certainly deserves honor in our clothing choices. And maybe ripped/distressed/bleached jeans, which originated as symbols of anti-God values, just don't cut it (oops, pun intended).