The Sex Jean

If you’re ever at a loss for blog topics, a trip to your local mall should give you all the inspiration you need. It should also give you a wicked case of envy for whoever invented the giraffe purse because, day-um, those things are STILL everywhere. Someone sure cleaned up on that one.

Last week I went to the hermetically sealed emporium of all that Europeans snicker at us for – Pizza-sized chocolate chip cookies. The Hello Kitty kiosk. The doughy Footlocker employees in their referee uniforms – because Tinker needed some back-to-school basics that could not be found in either the Hanna Andersson or Olive Juice catalogs, including a new pair of jeans. Which she calls jeanos, because Chuck calls them that, and sometimes, when getting her dressed, he calls them her Gino Vanellis. And she repeats it because it’s funny – Gino Vanellis – but I find it creepy because I had to actually live through the ’70s and I’ve never told anyone this, but I was a traumatized as a young girl, terrified that when I’d be of dating age, that that was the kind of guy awaiting me, that a Gino Vanelli type would be my only option. That I’d have to have SEX with Gino Vanelli! I’d stayed awake at night, too scared about my fate of my maidenhood to sleep. Thank GOD fashion and style changed dramatically throughout the ’80s. I no longer worried about being smothered by a carpet of chest hair and instead worried I’d never find a smooth, slightly androgynous Andrew McCarthy clone. Whew!

Now my nightmares include the possibility of the fashion pendulum swinging back and men with perms becoming the standard of hotness. If a teenage Tink finds this post, here’s a surefire way to break you mother’s heart, sweetheart: Bring home a hairy guy wearing polyester shirt unbuttoned to just a few inches above the bulge in his skin-tight slacks. I guarantee you’ll get just the reaction from me you’re craving.

So into Gap Kids I went. The last pair of jeans I bought for my daughter were from the Gap, and they were perfect. Dark wash but not too dark, simple boot cut, no embroidery, embellishments or spangles. Classic and timeless. Her godmother was in town when I bought them, and we both cooed over Tink when I put them on her. “She looks like a little teenager,” Auntie H gushed, her ovaries throbbing.

She did. There was something instantly grownup about her, and she looked … kind of sassy. A sassiness that will automatically turn to sexiness once she reaches some magical age, like 16, perhaps.

Jeans are sexy; they just are. Tight pairs on women, baggy cuts on men; there’s no getting around it. Not that children shouldn’t wear jeans. But, you know, you need to be careful not to tart the tots up too much. Jeans present an opportunity to cross a line in a way that overalls, for example, don’t.

I think most parents know this. Railing against clothes for little girls that are too sexy isn’t new. But what I don’t understand is, why aren’t designers and manufacturers listening? Not only do they not give a shit what the people who pay for children’s clothing say, they continue to push the envelope when they think we’re not looking.

I went to the toddler girl section of the Gap, since they classify sizes 12 months through 5 years as toddler. Even at first glance the selection was disappointing – lots of embroidery, distressing and extraneous pockets. I did find a pile of some plainer jeans, so I started going through them for style and size. Straight leg size 2; boot cut size 5; skinny size 3; boyfriend size 18-24 months …

Wait a minute. WHAT? THE HELL!

BOYFRIEND jeans for toddlers? Are you kidding me?

Now, before anyone tries to point out the simple logic behind calling them boyfriend jeans, let me tell you I get it. Women’s jeans are classified the same way. And since it’s women who buy children’s jeans, why not just stick to the same system for consistency and simplicity? Why come up with a whole new classification system just because they happen to be for females who have yet to achieve puberty, have no idea how babies are made and think they’re going to marry both their mommies and daddies when they get big? Let’s just treat them like miniature Carrie Bradshaws, right?

Now, my daughter can’t yet read, but what if she were 7 and I bought her a pair of boyfriend jeans?  What is a 7-year-old supposed to think about her new “boyfriend” jeans? And what’s her mother supposed to say when the kid asks? “Well, see, they’re cut like boys’ jeans, so it’s like you’re borrowing your boyfriend’s jeans.”

Why?

“Well, because, well, you might borrow his jeans if, you know, you needed to borrow a pair of jeans.”

Why?

Because, little girl, someday soon you’ll be so drunk one Saturday night that you’ll slip on some snow on your way back to his dorm room after leaving that frat party and your jeans will be wet and they won’t be dry in the morning, so you’ll just grab a pair of his. Or one of his idiot friends will spill a plastic cup of beer on your pants, so before you leave his apartment in the morning to do the walk of shame back to your place, you’ll need to borrow his jeans. The subtext being, you put these on in the morning after spending the night with someone with chest hair. Hopefully not as much chest hair as Gino Vanelli, but chest hair and smelly armpit hair nonetheless and it really doesn’t matter how disgusted you are about this now as a second-grader because it’s your destiny to spend your late teens and 20s in a series of relationships with guys who will mean nothing to you after you’re safely married with a nice family of your own so you might as well start to get ready for it.

Aren’t we even going to try to guard our kids’ innocence for a few years?

While you’re pondering the concept of boyfriend jeans for a 12-month-old, how about skinny jeans for someone who wears diapers? Do these jeans come with a fake ID in the pocket? How about some Plan B?

I understand that what the Gap is concerned with here is the cut of toddler jeans, not what the jeans wearer had to do the night before to be able to borrow the jeans. So then why not call them boy-cut jeans? Or big brother jeans? Or does that sound too Orwellian and the Gap preferred the jailbait insinuations of boyfriend jeans better?

Let me be clear here that I’m not asking any or all of my dozens of readers to not shop at the Gap. I’m just apoplectic over this ridiculousness and thought I’d share my outrage with fellow parents. Besides, it would be a little hypocritical, given how adorably adorable my daughter would look in them.

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Tagged as: fashion, jeans, sex and kids