The Denim Cutoffs That Made Me Cry by Ann Levin
After the lobsters and corn on the cob were cleared away, we got to talking about cars. Stan and I had just bought a new one, and Susan wanted us to see a picture of her and Ron in front of his all-time favorite ride. When she set it down on the table, I was transfixed. Not by their angelic youth or his lace-up Frye boots or the heart-stopping lines of his 280Z. But by what they had on—ragged jeans scissored off just below the crotch.
“You cut them yourself!” I exclaimed.
“Don’t you remember?” she said. “That’s what you had to do.”
Of course I remembered. When we were young, you couldn’t buy a pair of denim cutoffs in the store. You made them yourself when your regular jeans started to fall apart. But since denim is almost indestructible, that took a long time. Unless you were willing to help it along.
The mystery of junior high was, how did the jock girls on the cheerleading squad get theirs frayed to perfection, with long white threads dangling down the front of their muscular thighs? Rumors abounded. By soaking them in a tub with bleach? Leaving them out in the sun to bake? Adding stones to their mothers’ wash or running over them with a car? Unthinkable! But then again, they were ruthless enough to do whatever it took to get the look we all wanted. I hated my boring Wranglers because the stiff, sturdy fabric was forever indigo blue.
In high school, a hippie girl nicknamed Stinky wore her button-fly 501’s so baggy they practically slid off her butt. She paired them with flip-flops and a man’s button-down shirt three sizes too big, her long, tousled hair cascading down her back. Those cutoffs, circa 1969, packed a political message too—we were anti-war, anti-waste, anti-establishment.
I could scarcely believe it when less than a decade later, designer jeans were the rage, and a 15-year-old Brooke Shields was saying, “Do you want to know what comes between me and my Calvin’s? Nothing!” By 1980, when Reagan was elected president, you could buy your denim already ripped and shredded, adorned with sequins and jewels, acid- or stone-washed.
It didn’t help my state of mind when later that evening, on our way home, Stan and I tuned in to ’60s Gold on Sirius XM in the brand-new Toyota that I didn’t want to buy—I thought we should aim for 300,000 miles, not 100,000, before we traded in our trusty old Subaru—and the first song that came on was the Youngbloods’ “Get Together,” which always made me think of Woodstock. Not the event. I wasn’t there. But the movie, where half a million hippies happily huddled under blankets in the driving rain singing, “Come on, people now, smile on your brother, everybody get together, try to love one another right now.”
Back at home, long after Stan fell asleep, I went online to see what the internet had to say about cutoff jeans. Up came an image of Beyoncé at Coachella, looking like a goddess. She had on a pair of destroyed denim shorts just like Susan and Ron’s circa 1975.
All of a sudden, I realized I was crying. I couldn’t stop thinking about that faded snapshot of my old friends, both of them in their DIY cutoffs, just counting the minutes until they could jump into bed. I blinked away the tears and looked back at the screen, where I discovered that after the concert, you could buy ragged blue shorts like Beyoncé’s from the vintage brand Coal N Terry for just $90.
Things change, then change again. There was a revolution, then a counter-revolution, and capitalism won. It won because it figured out how to turn that feeling of brotherly love into a product. And it won because it recognized a fundamental truth—even if you’re not Beyoncé, denim cutoffs make you look hot.