Working at a liberal arts school, I sometimes see my colleagues wearing jeans. One colleague in particular typically wears a style of jeans that are about ten years out of date. Of course, the jeans that I wear most frequently are nearly two years old, so I’m sure that I will be out of fashion soon (if I’m not already). The point of this is that despite their long-standing place in the American wardrobe, jeans come in a wide variety of styles and fits. Now there is one more.
Levi’s has been selling “501 Boyfriend Jeans” for women for a while now*. The idea behind them is apparently that they are cut in a way that mimics men’s jeans (but still, somehow, not men’s jeans). Now, Levi’s has responded to the rise of “skinny jeans” with”Ex-Girlfriend Jeans” for men despite the fact that nearly nobody looks good in them (unless they want to accentuate their differences). Now men can buy super-tight jeans that were made for them but fit like they were made for their girlfriends (or, I guess, the girls who broke up with them for stealing their jeans).
Memoirs of a SLACer field reporter Stephen Colbert examines this issue further.
*It is interesting to note the way the Levi’s website differentiates “normal” men and women – the styles you get by clicking on those labels along the top of the site – from the labels that appear when you hover over these labels. For men, the only other option is “Big and Tall” while women can be either normal, “Petite,” or “Plus.”
