Correcting Fashion Blunders

I realize that the younger generation is not interested in what I have to say about the clothing industry. But before anyone turns a deaf ear, I want to stand up for moms in my age group.

Yes, we may frown at the pants that are worn too far below the waist and blouses worn too high above the waist, but you kids should know something. We saved you from the horrible dark blue jeans with orange stitching.

That's right. If the women of today hadn't boycotted those hideous jeans in the first place when we were your age, you would never have had stone-washed jeans.

We're the ones that opened the doors to slim, wide, boot-cut and relaxed fit. Otherwise, you would have had to wear these straight-legged things that never hem right with big fat square pockets on the back and stitching that reflects car headlights. And worst of all, they NEVER fade.

Remember those jeans, moms? Our mothers bought them because they looked clean and smart. We climbed trees, slid into first base, landed on our knees as often as we could on the grass and even ran over them with our bikes and they still looked like something purchased from the dorky section of the clothing department.

Now you can buy jeans of a much lesser durable quality that actually have been stained, torn, faded and run over by a car. It's vogue. But, young ladies, it was your old mother that made the jeans you wear today a reality.

Now some would have you distracted by silly things like the right to vote, fair wages and better health care as hallmarks of the women's movement. But I tell you that none of that would have been possible if those women had been wearing dark blue jeans with orange stitching. Nobody would have taken them seriously.

Clothes do make the person. They make an impression on those whose respect you wish to command. Thank God and thank your mother for the fashion statement you are able to make today because of the sacrifices we made so long ago.

I don't know what kind of statement you want to make by wearing pants that barely cover your behind, but maybe I lack the forward vision to see what the young ladies of today will achieve for all women in the future. Perhaps this is just the natural result of a generation that grew up with Barbie dolls without enough clothes to wear. Half the dolls go naked and the rest wear other doll clothes that are too small. Perhaps today's generation is simply living the fantasy they played with their Barbie doll.

If that's the case, then I expect to see girls wearing dresses that look like the top half of a tube sock the ever all purpose outfit for those with Barbies that could not afford her wardrobe and yet couldn't sew because sewing was so 'last generation.'