Holey Jeans

A pair of jeans was causing a hubbub on social media recently. These men's jeans can be purchased from a luxury department store. They are made to look as if they are caked with mud. I have no doubt people will buy them – even with their $400+ price tag. Urban people. In the country, you earn your mud and your mud stains.

GirlChild is an urban girl. She was born and raised in a large, Midwestern city. She loves metropolitan areas – the bigger, the better.


I was unable to attend a family wedding so I sent 16-year-old GirlChild in my place. She attended with my siblings and my mother. She was a responsible teenager who planned her wardrobe for the trip. She wrote a packing list, packed her clothes, and forgot nothing. Outfits for the drive each way, black jeans with strategically placed holes, dressy green tank top, and heels for the rehearsal dinner, and her favorite red dress for the wedding. It was a very urban wardrobe straight from the pages of the most current fashion magazines.

The wedding was in a Great Plains state. Although my daughter's jeans were very chic and very expensive, they were not understood by everyone in the area. In the Great Plains, holey jeans are barn clothes. At the rehearsal dinner, my uncle's sister-in-law approached GirlChild and said, "We're taking up a collection so you can buy pants without holes in them!"


Fortunately, my mother's sister immediately jumped to GirlChild's defense. This other woman had never met GirlChild. She is old enough to have grandchildren my daughter's age. GirlChild attended this dinner with five adult relatives. There is no reason for a grown woman to bully a teenager in this snarky manner. She could have spoken with an adult in the group but she should have remained silent.


We each have a belief system that tells us how to live life. These beliefs were created from our values, our cultures, and our experiences. GirlChild was not wrong in her clothing choice. My uncle's sister-in-law was not wrong in her thoughts that holey jeans belong in the barn. This was just a cultural difference.  One culture spends $200 for distressed jeans from a boutique store. The other culture spends $20 for jeans from a low-end department store - which also sells agricultural and automotive supplies - and retires them to the barn when they become distressed.


Before we laugh about the "mud caked" jeans from the luxury department store, we should ask ourselves if we've tried to understand how others live or if we're using our belief system to judge that which we do not understand. Either way, we should ignore it. In the grand scheme of our lives, if how others dress is a big concern for us, we should be thankful because we are living a wonderful life.