bfj vs. dpj

It seems all good things must eventually be knocked down the pedestal, and so it is with the skinny jean. Or as my mother called my Tsubi Lean Beans: “Mambo Pants.” Not that skinny jeans have been thoroughly disgraced and banished, but their status as girl-of-the-moment has been usurped by what is called the “boyfriend jean.”

Now, I am someone who will probably never give up leggingy jeans (too much Joan Jett in me), but even I succumbed and bought the pair you see above: Acne’s “Generic Girl” in “One Wash,” a dark 80s Wrangler blue. What drew me to these jeans was that its star is built around narrative rather than shape. The boyfriend jean’s shape is purposely shapeless: it is basically a baggy, bow-legged jean meant to be worn rolled up at the hems. Its bow-legged seams are perfect for my own bowed legs, but it is hardly a classically elegant shape of femininity. The boyfriend jean’s true shape is in the story of women that it writes upon the body of the wearer. The description for the Generic Girl jean on the Acne Jeans’ online store makes this quite clear:

“Generic Girl is a loose and comfortable pant that looks as if you’ve sneakily borrowed your boyfriend’s jeans.”

This description is symptomatic of most blurbs about the boyfriend jean found on other online stores and for other denim brands. The jeans-du-jour that came before the boyfriend jean promised its wearers a cuter body, either through illusion (the bootleg cut, typified by Marc by Marc Jacobs’ “San Francisco” jean, dropped the waist to the hip, and promised an illusion of neverending legs with its shoe-covering slightly flared hem) or delusion (the skinny jean, which look best on humans with the skeletal structure of a matchstick, functioned as a falsely assertive badge of anorexic bodily superiority).

The boyfriend jean, however, offers neither illusion nor delusion of a fashionable body but something much more potentially insidious: happy heterosexual romance: “I have a boyfriend from whom I can ‘sneakily borrow’ clothes.” This is a status symbol of a different kind than the anorexic skinny jean, and perhaps more harmful. What do these jeans say about the kind of romantic relationships girls want with (or from?) boys? At the basic level, a very traditional one. The directionality of the boyfriend jean retells the old story of a girl’s drowning herself in her boyfriend’s cologne or prancing around in his shirt to feel him “on her” when he is not there. The boyfriend jean grows out of the notion that the ultimate woman is one that has a man by her side. Essentially, it is an old, boring, sexist story: it is the height of femme chic to have a boyfriend who completes your being.

But there is another way to look at the story offered by the boyfriend jean. While the baggy fit of the boyfriend jean seems to reinforce through eroticization the traditional difference between males and females, the narrative that emerges upon the physical experience of its wearing is actually a promotion of sexual interchangeability. The boyfriend jean is not just a loosely-cut jean. If you try to get the boyfriend jean look with a pair of old Levi’s 501’s, you will immediately face a problem: the waist-leg proportions on old jeans are fairly even. That is, the width of the legs usually follows the width of the waist. So, if you are a size 2, to get the “baggy” look you’d probably have to go for a men’s 501 of waist size 30 or more, which means you will always need to wear a belt, and end up looking like you’re borrowing not your boyfriend’s jeans but a potato sack.

This fantasy of “sneakily borrowing your boyfriend’s jeans” is a fantasy, psychically and physically. Let me tell you, OK? “Sneakily borrowing your boyfriend’s jeans” is not making a fashion statement when your boyfriend, like my ex-husband, is twice your weight. Once many years ago when I tried on my ex’s jeans, I found that I could pull ONE LEG of his jeans over my entire lower body and wear it as a floor-length column skirt. This is metaphorical of a girl’s usually unfulfilled desire to turn her boyfriend into a girlfriend: she likes a man to be manly, but that means a girly sensibility is by definition excluded from him. This is a desire to make your boyfriend “fit” you: make him...more like you. It is a major and paradoxical feminine fantasy: turning your slop-scruffy boyfriend into a girlfriend: sensitive, emotional, listening, attentive.

But the boyfriend jean lets you turn that fantasy into a reality...at least in denim. The boyfriend jean of now corrects the proportion conundrum of men’s jeans on women, by keeping the leg width independent of the waist size. In other words: you can now have a jean that fits you like your boyfriend’s in the legs but like your own at the waist. So what does it mean that you are borrowing the jeans of your boyfriend when its waist sits in perfect beltless snugness on the tops of your hips? What kind of a boy has a 25” waist and...legs the size of redwood tree trunks? The utter fantasy (or horror-film, depending on your tastes) proportion of such a boyfriend implied by the jeans emphasizes the utter impracticability of the fantasy of the perfect, stronger-and-bigger-than-you boyfriend. Instead, it allows the girl to embrace her inner freak, makes her open for an odd-shaped, imperfect, even freakish, boyfriend.

As a femme faggot who likes messy scruffy boys who are soft inside, I like this particular narrative of the boyfriend jean. It makes me hope that the straight girls who will buy and wear boyfriend jeans will similarly shift their fantasy of boyfriends. The boyfriend jean is a girl’s access to the progressive male porn-fantasy of Prince’s “If I Was Your Girlfriend.” In that song, the boy wishes he were his girlfriend’s “girl friend” so that he could get even deeper and intimate into her nooks and crannies. But that cheap trick to see her naked at every second is really a cover for emotional nudity, the ultimate intimacy mutuality:

Is it really necessary 4 me 2 go out of the room
just because U wanna undress?
I mean, we don't have 2 make children 2 make love
And then, we don't have 2 make love 2 have an orgasm
Your body's what I'm all about
Can I see U?
I'll show U

The song essentially asks: do we have to look the same to feel the same? The song, and the boyfriend jean both answer: NO. In this way, the boyfriend jean produces a new math for calibrating both the feminine body and emotionality. This notion that heterosexual fucking doesn’t lead to or originate from a desire for children or orgasms is a very homosexual notion. As a feminist, as a femme, as a faggot, I hope it makes straight girls think more about their bond to gay people in more complicated and emotional way than the usual jokey “Will and Grace” kinda way.

On November 4^th, straight girl voters will have a choice more important than boyfriend jean or skinny jean. And in the voting booth, I hope they choose the candidate who has the daring and vision to refer to gay people as “our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters” on national television, in front of an entire stadium of people at the Democratic National Convention. I hope they vote for Barack Obama. And additionally, I hope those straight sisters voting in California vote against Proposition 8, which is a constitutional amendment entitled “Eliminates Right of Same-Sex Couples to Marry Act”: Prop 8 would effectively ban gay marriage. My mother is a straight woman and a naturalized U.S. citizen who, in this election year, has registered (Democrat) and voting in America for the first time in her life. A few weeks ago, she told my sister: “I will vote on gay marriage [against Prop 8] because I have a direct and personal stake in it.” I hope every straight girl will regard herself as a “sister” to gay and lesbian people. I hope they will begin to think of their boyfriend jeans as “domestic partner jeans.”

noonprop8.com
eqca.org/NOon8
barackobama.com

lust to love

Jet lag? Postsummerpartum depression? Brain cells destroyed in the 90s playing catch-up? Whatever the reason, I’ve been feeling a bit off-balance in my first week back in Providence. So as usual when this sort of thing happens to me, I thought: well, maybe I need some new jeans. In the September issue of French Vogue, there was an editorial featuring slim-legged, dark denim bell bottoms—J Brand “Love Story”—that I thought would be nice for a teacher lady look, a change from my usual jeans that want to be stockings in their next life. As I was shopping around online for it, I found it. But weirdly, I didn’t feel the usual euphoria that happens when my fingertip, then the cursor, hits “Add to Basket” and then “Buy.”

So I didn’t. Instead, I wandered over to MoveOn.org to “buy” a Barack Obama t-shirt. The t-shirt comes with a donation ($12 minimum—I gave an even $20) to MoveOn.org, a liberal political action committee that brings the vital grassroots organizing of the late 20^th Century to the internet age of now. Technically, I was shopping, but also technically, I was not shopping. The t-shirt itself is a gorgeous object, so this was a shopping trip like any other. But it was not a shopping trip like any other, because the money I spent didn’t just boomerang back into me as a t-shirt; it had an outwardly radiating arc as well, in the form of chipping in to the funding of MoveOn’s project to register young Obama voters in swing states. This is an important thing to “purchase.” I knew this rationally. What I didn’t expect was that it brought me that same glittery tingle I feel when I locate and purchase a perfect pair of long-lusted-after jeans.

Can the femme froth frivolity of shopping make one political? OK, this is not to say that I’ve converted fully into some totally antimaterialistic political activist—my credit card statements for even the past couple days can testify to that—but...why not? I truly believe you can be frivolous and politically forward (re: a leftwingliberaldemocrat in a committed and working way) at the same time. Because it is the fall semester here at RISD, I’ve been once again reading one of my favorite novels, Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth, to teach to my freshmen class. It’s a novel I teach always against the grain of the students’ prejudices against its heroine: they usually stigmatize the manhunting Lily Bart as materialistic. I try to show them that Wharton’s portrayal of Lily is more complex, that Lily’s materialism is not a cynical desire to manipulate or accumulate wealth, but a love of things. (Perhaps this teaching is a bit defensive...Joony Bart??) This fall, I’m particularly moved by these lines spoken by Lily, musing upon the nature of frivolity:

“...the people who find fault with [it] are to apt to regard it as an end and not a means, just as the people who despise money speak as if its only use were to be kept in bags and gloated over? Isn’t it fairer to look at them both as opportunities, which may be used either stupidly or intelligently, according to the capacity of the user?”

Shopping produces magic—your empty closet is suddenly filled with...Alexander Wang sweaters! Rick Owens shirts! Vintage YSL! Acne jeans!—but it is practical magic. As your empty closet fills, your full bank account or credit line becomes moth-eaten. But to me, that’s the beauty of shopping: you get something for something. Shopping is underwritten with a sense of justice; there is an elegant balance to its form. So, as Lily Bart says, , I want to, any time I can, use my shopping instinct as a means—towards a universal health care, peace-based foreign policy, corporation control, equal pay for women—and do so intelligently.

So, the next day, I moved the money I would have spent on the “Love Story” jeans onto support for Barack Obama and donated $100 directly to his campaign. When my next paycheck comes through this week, I will donate another $100 (or if I’m feeling splurgy, even more).

Discovering this new extension of my shopping instinct made me realize that part of my feelings of general imbalance was a crash, not from the euphoria of summer sloth, but how the brilliant work of the Democratic National Convention to produce a positive sense of forward movement for this country was eclipsed by the media hysteria produced by McCain’s cynical and reckless choice of his running mate. We know who this woman is, and as an eater of lipstick, all I can say to Palin is: I know lipstick, and that pink-with-shit-brown-undertones you’ve got coated on your mouth is definitely NOT lipstick.

By now, it should be crystal clear to every single mind-body-soul in America that only a certain black man can pull us out of not just the Black Monday of Wall Street, but all the black mondays we’ve had for the past eight years. Anyone who knows me knows what a pessimistic, dark gothqueen I am; and yet, I am completely optimistic about the Obama/Biden victory. Let’s all
together shop (or volunteer voter registration, or canvas swing voters, or spread the real truth via emails-phone calls-protests-conversations with friends) to get Barack Obama to 270 on November 4^th!
MoveOn.org
barackobama.com

the story of o

I hate birthdays. I hate my own birthdays. Not because it notches up the measuring tape of aging, but because I hate any days (usually called “holidays”) that necessitate pomp, celebration, anticipation. As a kid, I never had birthday parties, and as an adult, I’m happy to have friends forget to remember August 28. (Although I love gifts—who doesn’t?)

Having said that, however, I don’t hate my birthdate. August 28 is the day that Martin Luther King, Jr. changed America forever with his “I have a dream” speech in Washington D.C. Given my devotion to black feminism, it makes me feel that I was born under some protective, insightful star to share anniversaries with that event. This year, on the 45^th anniversary of Dr. King’s speech, and the thirtysomething anniversary of my mother’s first caesarian, I received one of the best birthday presents ever: the official nomination of Barack Obama for the Democratic party’s presidential candidate, and his beautiful speech on that occasion. Watching this slim strong beautiful black man take the podium and convincingly show us his worth as this nation’s leader, watching him being cheered and adored by a stadium full of people of all races—and most of them white—I mean, white people actually cheering on a black man to lead them—I felt exactly like the older black women delegates who were wiping away joyful tears: so moved with pride.

And so along with the lovely black mohair Acne cardigan my sister bought for me, Barack’s speech will prepare me for cold November—and specifically, November 4—as the summer days finally fade into fall. As I get ready to travel back to Providence for the fall semester, I carry with me the filling memory of the Democratic National Convention, and a not entirely unrelated fashion choice—wearing shorts—to create an Indian summer in New England fall.

A few weeks ago, I wrote about my love of run pantyhose. Since then, the temperature in the San Francisco Bay Area had become unusually hot—even for August. So one day, I decided to wear my denim cut-offs without any hose at all. This may not seem like a big deal, but it is to this girl who has not worn shorts since 1999. I vowed then that I would never bare my legs again, I who did nothing but bare legs throughout my tweens. During my college days, I wore tight tight short shorts, and had smooth legs to go with it. Either through Korean genetics or some hormonal imbalance, I don’t have very much body hair. The scant leg hair I have is mostly below my knees, and I think I can count how many I have on each leg given a free lazy afternoon. As a tweenager, I shaved the suckers off then to give a gleaming presentation. I bared my legs as a displaycase for the butt that was packed into high denim cut-offs.

This was all a part of my self-packaging as a classic 70s clone-y faggot. Once I calmed down and matured properly into my grown-up femininity, I became decidedly embarrassed about such obvious tactics, and forever plead allegiance to jeans...with legs still attached to them. But this summer, when I put on the amputated jeans with my legs bared to the Bay, it felt different. It didn't feel sexual, it felt a bit freeing. The first time I put them on to go out in public, I spun right back home because the gleam of the afternoon sun made obvious the layers of dead white skin on my legs: ASHY LEGS!! I came back home, lathered my legs with Tom Ford Black Orchid body cream and set off again, feeling creamy smooth and patchouli-smelly.

I also made a conscious decision not to shave my legs this time, even though the scraggly hairs are a bit ugly. It is what I am. Wearing shorts is no longer a symbol of sexuality, but a symbol of the transparency of my interiority. It is a symbol of my comfort with the creature I had become, the creatures I had been. This may sound insane, but wearing shorts now in my thirties, at this juncture of my gendered self, makes me feel like I’m imitating Michelle Obama. Now, of course Michelle Obama doesn’t wear shorts in her political role. But significantly, unlike many other political females (and one in particular) Michelle eschews pantsuits. And suits in general. I have been a huge fan of Michelle for the past year, but seeing her this week at the DNC, I was struck again by how dazzling she is. Michelle is elegantly formal in the strictest sense of the word: having form. Dressed in a turquoise deep-v-neck wool dress, she was like a perfectly grammared sentence. Legible. Clear. Smooth. Comfortable. Articulated.

As she gave her magnificent speech the first day of the DNC, she in body was like the sentences she was projecting out. I was struck not only by how differently she dressed from, say, Nancy Pelosi (satin picture-collared jacket) or Hillary Clinton (sunkist-yellow pantsuit...yikes!) but how differently she dressed from her former self. At the DNC of 2004, where Barack gave the speech that put him in the American political consciousness, Michelle wore a shiny white suit with nervous shoulders and pointy lapels. Suits feel like armor because with their seam and padding skeleton, they can theoretically stand on their own. They demand you button yourself upright into its line. Michelle traded the suits for these dresses, and not just any dresses, but pull-over dresses: dresses that go on like comfy oversized t-shirts. Michelle’s shift dresses would collapse like old t-shirts without the upright spine of her being to embody them. This is a different kind of power-dressing than the 80s throwback of Hillary or the dominatrix-style of Condoleezza Rice. Michelle’s over-the-head dress says of its wearer: I am the one who gives my clothing life, I am airy and mobile in these clothes. Power not as domination, but as communication.

Wearing shorts now, in my thirties, I feel like I’m wearing a Michelle Obama pull-over dress.

The shorts must be of a perfectly awkward length: skimming the thigh but never remind of panties. The shirt worn with it must not be tight, but baggy, confuse the onlooker: is that person wearing a t-shirt or a dress? To replicate the red-and black Thakoon dress Michelle wore on August 28, I’ll pair black denim cut-offs with my Nirvana “Heart-Shaped Box” t-shirt—black with red all-over-silk screened hearts.

There are some who criticized Michelle’s dresses for being too informal, too revealing. These critics are wrong. Untied, uncovered skin is not inappropriate or sexual, but forthright, strong, and unbound.