chapter 12 in which kasey rants about designer jeans and culture as a whole.

[editor's note: I've been away for a few days - sorry about that, I don't make it a habit, but it was a hard week. I've missed you.]

Yes! It's time for my weekly rant - the one day every week or so that I set aside to pontificate on something related to snobbery, fashion, home goods, or all of the above. Last week I went off about the snobby stores. Hopefully you have been able to shake off any snobbery that had been stubbornly clinging to you.

This started as a small seed in my head as I was trying on a pair of Sevens/True Religion/Ernest Sewn/insert brand of high-end, overpriced jeans here. WHY are these jeans so impossible to get on, no matter what "cut" you try on? Every size seems to have the same principle to it - slim hipped and a 34'' inseam. Now, knowing that a majority of the population is NOT slim-hipped and 5'10, and assuming a clothier is in business to make money, why are these being mass produced in a cut that most people will not fit into?

Exclusivity. Ruling out most people. Thin is worthy, thick is not. The main message in building the brand is to have exclusivity and desire. Dangling that carrot in front of the masses saying, "if you worked really, really hard, maybe, just maybe, you could have this too. You could be one of us." And I love that people fall for this. Hard. Our culture responds so well to negative reinforcement, it's (almost) astonishing. Raise your hand if you've ever bought a pair of designer jeans you've had to diet/squat/not breathe/get 6 inches cut off the bottom before you could get into them. WHY? [editor's note: my hand is up in the air right now.]

Why are we doing this? Why are we willingly purchasing product that we can't even wear out of the store? Why do I see women squeezed into frighteningly unflattering jeans because they have "status"? Why am I seeing women paying over $150 on jeans, then adding another $25-30 to the tag for alterations? Why do we accept it when salespeople say matter-of-factly, "well, nearly everyone has to alter them, you have to be really lucky to be able to wear them off the rack." Do we really need to fit in that badly?

I used to. I used to need that acceptance, that perceived power, the idea that a pair of jeans could really do a bret michaels and "rock my world". And it never really worked. The jeans got old, they faded, shrank, became last season's, and there I was feeling the same way. It was never enough. And it was coming from me - my response to the world I saw, my swallowing and digesting of principles and ideas I hadn't thought about enough to decide if I even believed in them in the first place.

Well, darlings, I don't believe in it anymore. I really don't. Manufacturers can cut jeans any old way they want, and if they fit and flatter, I will purchase them. If they don't, back they go. I don't have to be a certain shape to be acceptable. I don't have to spend an exorbitant amount of money to prove that I belong somewhere or so I can feel superior to someone else, rather than just present who I am to them - warts and all. I don't need a suit of armor to hide behind anymore. I dig who I am, and I dig who you are too - and none of us have to prove ourselves to anyone. We really don't.

And to those manufacturers and those pimps of a certain exclusive aesthetic that most of us work like a dog to come close to but will never quite get it right because they set it up that way, I have only one thing to say and to do so, I will quote a strong man that has never been anything but himself - Jay Z: "I got 99 problems, being your bitch ain't one."

Lots of strong, opinionated viking love, kasey