Skinny Jeans

In my last post I traced historical trends in blue jeans fashions from their adoption in the 1960s with the basic look below

 and continued until women were wearing frankly silly jeans like those in the following illustration.

When these high-waisted jeans were determined to be rather unflattering, jeans designers took a new look.  My theory is that they took note of young men wearing their jeans hanging low on the backside, as seen here,

and made adjustments for women's styles, leading to low-rise looks like these below:

Again, another fashion faux pas.  Personally I blame Britney Spears, who often was seen wearing such jeans.  Let's face it -- they didn't look that good even on her.

But if low-rise jeans didn't flatter Ms. Spears, they were an absolute disaster for the average woman.

It was during this period that the phrase "muffin top" was coined to describe the results when low-rise jeans were worn by women who had even the smallest amount of flesh between their waists and their thighs, which was pretty much all of them.  See below.

For several years there, we had young men and women wearing pants that showed us much more than we wanted to see.  Such a mistake.

Eventually this trend played itself out and the new look was jeans that sat higher but were much tighter through the leg.

This was accomplished by adding a small percentage of elastane to denim fabric, allowing a certain amount of stretch.  These looked great on slim gals like the ones below, especially when worn with 4-inch heels.
  

Figuring that if skinny was good, then skinnier was even better, designers then came up with jeggings.  The word is a combination of jeans and leggings, and the product was made of even stretchier fabric, as you can see in the example below.

Many, perhaps most, women wearing jeggings also wore tunic tops for obvious reasons.

By this point, jeans had got about as tight as they could.  If designers wanted anything more close-fitting they would have had to invent a spray-on product.  Thankfully, that did not happen.

But the women kept buying skinny jeans, which I find remarkable.  Half of American women wear clothing sized 14 or higher.  These ultra-skinny jeans did them no favors.  And, for all women, there was the danger of rendering jeans unwearable if they accidentally were put in the dryer.

To this day retail  and online stores around the country continue to sell very tight jeans and somewhat fewer jeggings, but there has been a belief developing that it is time again for new looks.

Here is one called "boyfriend jeans."  (You may remember that "boyfriend jackets" and "boyfriend sweaters" were pretty well-received in recent years, and so it is not surprising that the idea was extended to women's jeans.)

One variation on boyfriend jeans is below -- jeans deliberately torn in many places.  These typically are quite expensive.  I see them around from time to time, but my impression is that women who are used to spending a lot of money on clothes don't really know how to make this work.

Another trend -- actually one that never went away for some women -- is boot-cut jeans.  The thought is that these are more generally flattering because a little more width at the bottom of the leg balances out the natural width in women's hips.  I think there will be a lot more boot-cut jeans sold going forward.

Below is a new version of the boot cut, introduced by the former Spice Girl, Victoria Beckham.  As you can see, it features a wider hem in the pant and recalls the bell-bottom jean craze of the 1970s, when jeans just kept getting wider and wider at the bottom.  In retrospect, I think most agree that those were the bad old days.  We all should hope they do not return.

Blue Jeans: A Fashion Look Back

Here is a photo of movie star James Dean in 1955, the year he starred in Rebel Without a Cause.  The movie caught the imagination of a counterculture that was beginning to take shape in the United States. One of the most controversial things about James Dean was that he was wearing jeans.

(Blue jeans were first introduced in the country by Levi Strauss, a German immigrant who saw a need for heavy-duty work pants for gold miners during the California Gold Rush.   He experimented with various fabrics before settling on blue denim strengthened with grommets.  The result was patented in 1873 and was worn for generations by working men, and some women. )

Before James Dean's day, jeans were not worn to church or to restaurants or to operatic performances.  But once introduced into the mainstream, or at least the mainstream of emerging youth culture, jeans took off, and people have been wearing them ever since.

Here is a picture of a beat group wearing jeans at a performance in1960.

During the 1960s, jeans became part of young people's wardrobes.  Men and women favored traditional Levi's jeans in men's sizes.  All was fine.

Then, in the 1970s, new designs in jeans were introduced, often with unfortunate results.

Flared jeans, then called bell bottoms, came into fashion.

For women, bell bottoms started out looking like this.

Then, with time, the look became more exaggerated, with this result.

The same thing happened with men's jeans.  First came this look.   

By the end of the decade, men were wearing outfits like the one below, which was immortalized on a postage stamp.

Many, many older people now have to live with family photograph albums containing pictures like the ones above, which must be a constant source of mirth to their younger relatives.

By the mid to late 1970s, it was time for another youthquake.  It came in the form of punk rock.

One very influential group was the New York rock band The Ramones.  Below is a picture of the group, around 1977, the year they released their breakout album, "Rocket to Russia."

Regular jeans were back, and about time.

But this didn't stop lamentable innovation in blue jeans styles. 

Sometime around this period, women's jeans were restyled.  The bell bottom was abolished, and the volume of fabric was basically reversed.  Women's jeans started to look like those pictured below, with high waists, generous amounts of fabric through the rear and thigh areas, tapering down the legs to the narrowest point at the ankles.

This was another fashion faux pas, and it's not surprising that it didn't last long.  Jeans like these are now known derisively as Mom Jeans.  Here are some other photos of Mom Jeans; it is definitely not a look to be recommended.

After this disaster, fashion designers went back to their ateliers. They had got the point that high-waisted jeans were not flattering.  They went in another direction.


The result, Skinny Jeans, is the topic of tomorrow's post.

Holocaust Remembrance Day

Today is Holocaust Remembrance Day, which is commemorated mostly in Israel, where many of the few survivors of Europe's Jewish slaughter settled after the end of World War II.

After that, the world vowed never to let such a thing happen again.  But of course it did happen again.

In the spring of 1994, there was another genocide.  The Hutus, the dominant and ruling tribe in Rwanda, butchered more than 800,000 Tutsis and Hutu moderates in a period of just 100 days. The stories of rape and mutilation are horrifying.  Some Tutsis were offered the opportunity to pay to be killed by a bullet instead of being tortured and then hacked to death.

The Rwandan genocide was just 20 years ago.  Are we better people now?  Would we step in if it happened today?

The essence of genocide is the same as racism or tribalism:  Identifying a target as the "other," not one of us, and using that otherness as an excuse to persecute or kill.

It happens in small situations as well.

Four years ago, a Salvadoran immigrant who lived in the town next to mine was sitting on a park bench after the end of his restaurant shift when three African American teenagers approached and beat him so savagely that he died three days later.  The attackers took videos and shouted encouragement to each other as they pummeled him.

About the same time, also in New Jersey, an Indian-born computer scientist was taking a summer evening walk with his wife and children when five young men, white and black and full of malt liquor, stopped their car, got out and beat him.  He was rushed to a hospital and, after a few days, he too died.

The attackers in these cases did not know the men they beat, and they had no reason to do what they did.  In each situation, they found a convenient "other" and set upon him with violence.

On a day like today, it is useful to reflect on these things.

E-Cigarettes

E-cigarettes are becoming popular in the United States.  Like traditional cigarettes, they convey nicotine, but in a steam vapor, not in smoke that is inhaled into the lungs.

E-cigarettes employ delivery systems that look like actual cigarettes, and this seems to make health authorities' heads explode.

Now, as many states are legalizing largely unstudied marijuana for "medicinal" use, the FDA is keeping quiet about that and instead is going on the warpath about the nicotine in e-cigarettes because it is believed to be addictive and may cause yet-to-be specified harms.

Interesting.  People have been smoking cigarettes for more than 100 years.  There is incontrovertible evidence that inhaling the smoke in real cigarettes greatly damages the lungs and heart and raises the incidence of certain types of cancer.  Nicotine, not so much.

There is likely to be an outright ban on the sale of e-cigarettes to anyone under the age of 18, which makes sense.  I wouldn't recommend "vaping" myself, but then I also don't recommend drinking sugary sodas or riding a bicycle without a helmet.

In fact, there are three groups of people for whom e-cigarettes might be a very good idea indeed.

First are current cigarette smokers.  Between 400,000 and 500,000 Americans die earlier deaths each year, mostly of lung cancer and emphysema, following many years of smoking.  More than 18 percent of adults still smoke, and most of them want to quit. There is growing anecdotal evidence that e-cigarettes help them with this.  At its yet-to-be-defined worst, vaping is vastly safer than smoking.

Second are alcoholics in recovery.  Not all of these people smoke cigarettes, but studies suggest that more than half of them do so, at least for a time, substituting a bad drug for another that, in some ways, is worse.  If vaping helps them, I'm for it. (In fact, even more recovering alcoholics drink coffee, often lots of it, which suggests that it, too, is helpful through a very difficult process;  maybe the FDA should investigate the safety of the caffeine in coffee beans.)

Third are people with schizophrenia.  It has been observed for decades that almost all of them smoke cigarettes.  Scientists suggest that the active ingredient in nicotine binds to brain receptors that release dopamine and serotonin, offering comfort with a very challenging disease.  In addition, there is some evidence that nicotine may improve schizophrenics' focus and may, at the margin, turn down some of the noise in their heads.  Would it be so awful if switching to vaporized nicotine offered these unfortunate people some small comfort?

Urban Prep

When I was in Chicago a few weeks ago, I had a chance to meet Tim King and hear him speak.

King is the founder of Urban Prep, a group of three high schools serving young black men in some of the poorest sections of Chicago.  He started his first high school, after two rejections from Chicago public schools, as a contract school in 2006. Later Urban Prep was made a public charter school.  The second and third Urban Preps followed later.  Total enrollment is now 1,400.

Urban Prep's sole goal is to prepare young African American men for college.  So far, 100 percent of
 its graduates have been admitted to four-year colleges, which is noteworthy given where its students start.  All students are admitted by lottery.  Freshmen typically arrive several years behind their grade level; most are eligible for free or reduced-price lunches (a measure of poverty in school districts); most come from single-parent homes.

After eight years in Chicago public schools, some Urban Prep students can't catch up or don't buy the program; some drop out.  The first year's class enrolled 166 freshmen and graduated 107.  There is much respect and support from teachers and fellow students at the school, but the work is hard.

Still, 100 percent of those who stick it out go to four-year colleges.  In the rest of Chicago, almost 60 percent of African American male students drop out of high school.  Only one in 40 finishes college, and a growing number of these are Urban Prep graduates.

What King and his team have accomplished is remarkable, but what surprises me is that anyone would think it is some kind of new idea.

The Urban Prep Program

     The school year begins with a convocation ceremony during which freshman students are given
      blazers with the school crest on the breast pocket.  Students wear khakis, blazers, shirts and
      red ties to school each day.

     Each school day begins with "Community," at which accomplishments are recognized,
     announcements are made and the school creed, a series of statements in which the students
     commit themselves to hard work and persistence through adversity, is recited.

      The school day runs longer than the Chicago average, ending at 4 p.m.

     Students and teachers address each other with their titles and surnames: Mr. Young, Mr. Jones.
     All are expected to treat each other with respect.

     Each year's class is divided into groups of 25 students who are guided by a Fellow, a recent
     college graduate who has demonstrated an interest in the success  of young black men.  The
      Fellows keep tabs on individual students and their progress.  They tutor during the school day,
      share lunch with students, stick around late for after-school activities and are in contact with
      parents.  (There are many applicants for each Fellow position.)

     When Urban Prep students are admitted to colleges, they trade their red ties for red and gold
      striped ones.

      The school year ends with a tropaia (trophy) ceremony in which the highest achieving group
       receives the school's Pride Award. (The school emblem is a lion.)

Why It Works

If you have sent a son to Boy Scouts or Little League or a traditional summer camp, you will get this instantly.

Boys want to be part of something bigger than themselves.  They want affiliation with other boys they respect.  They deeply crave guidance and recognition from honorable men.

I looked around the internet for reports about Urban Prep, and one interested me.  It came as the school year was starting in 2011.  At a school meeting, parents reported that members of a local gang were harrassing students, injuring some.  One mother reported that she was spending $60 a week on cabs to take her son to school and bring him home.

Tim King

What Urban Prep offers is entry to something better than a street gang.  It can be a threat to street gangs.  It puts the incentives in the right places.

Tim King, the founder of Urban Prep, is a great speaker.  If you get a chance to hear him talk, by all means go.

King announced recently that he plans to take his concept to at least one school outside Illinois next year.  If I were running an inner-city school district, I'd give him a call.

Justin the Cat

One year ago today in Philadelphia, someone poured accelerant on a tiny cat and lit him on fire.  A passerby saw the kitten, burning, on the street and smothered the flames with his coat.  

The cat, now known as Justin, was about a month old at the time.  Despite the offer of a $6,000 reward, his attacker has never been identified and brought to justice.

Here is one gruesome picture of Justin and his injuries.

Justin was rushed to veterinary treatment and, remarkably, survived.  His long recuperation at one point required him to wear the cone, shown below, to prevent him from biting at his stitches.

Hundreds of people volunteered to adopt Justin, and a woman in New Jersey was chosen to take him.  He now is a healthy 10-pound cat, seemingly normal in all ways except that he will never have ears.

We can call this a success story.  People have contributed many thousands of dollars in Justin's name to animal shelters.  He will be a featured attraction soon at a benefit for animal rescue.  He has a Facebook page, "Justin, Fire Survivor."

But the outrages never seem to end.

Last weekend, in Paterson, NJ, police conducting a drug raid at a house found more than they expected: 21 pit bulls who were being used in a dog-fighting ring.  Two men are in custody on multiple charges.  Animal rights workers say the dogs will be rehabilitated and, eventually, put up for adoption.

Good people have come to the rescue, again, and good for them.

That such work is necessary reminds me of something my grandmother used to say.

"Some people are just no darn good."

Beards of Baseball

I don't often watch baseball, but early this season I saw part of a game on television and noticed quite a lot of facial hair on the players.  It made me wonder if this was a new thing or some harkening back to old traditions.

So I did some research.

20th Century Baseball Greats and Their Facial Hair

I looked up some of the famous baseball players of the 20th century and made lists of those who had facial hair and those who did not.  Here is what I found.

         Clean-shaven players                                          Players with facial hair
            Honus Wagner
            Babe Ruth
            Lou Gehrig
            Sandy Koufax
            Mickey Mantle
            Joe DiMaggio
            Jackie Robinson
            Peewee Reese
            Yogi Berra
            Ted Williams
            Hank Aaron
            Roberto Clemente
         

You can see where I'm going here.  Things have changed in the new millenium.

Baseball Facial Hair in the 21st Century -- Team and Individual

The Boston Red Sox, winners of the 2013 World Series, have been for years a team whose members were known for a great variety and amount of facial hair.

Here is a picture of some of the team members last year.

As the Series approached, many Boston fans were reported to be growing beards of their own to boost the team's prospects.

Only one member of the 2013 Red Sox team, pitcher Koji Uehara, declined to grow a beard or mustache.  (Nobody seemed to hold this against him, however, perhaps because he turned in the best season ever recorded by a Boston reliever.)

Kevin Youkilis on the Red Sox

Johnny Damon on the Red Sox

                     


Here are two examples
of the transformations in a
pair of former Red Sox players' looks before and after   they were traded to the New

    

Kevin Youkilis the Yankee

Johnny Damon the Yankee

York Yankees, a club not known for having bearded players.

This suggests that a certain amount of beard has for some time been part of players' self-identification as part of the Red Sox organization, but not for
the Yankees.

The day after the Series clincher, it was reported that several Red Sox team members shaved, or at least trimmed their lush beards, no doubt causing barbers all over New England to heave sighs of relief.

Brian Wilson

Above is Brian Wilson earlier in his pitching career, when he was a member of the San Francisco Giants.  The Giants weren't famed for facial hair, as the Red Sox were.  Wilson adopted the look, including dying his beard several shades darker than his natural hair, as a personal expression of his individuality.

Fans in San Francisco were comfortable with this, especially after his performance as the team closer in 2010 helped the Giants win the World Series that year.

His look was so unusual that it naturally attracted attention.  Fans wore beard masks to games and created a facebook site called "Brian Wilson's Beard."




Wilson also was an early adopter of the Faux Hawk, discussed earlier on this blog, but with his own signature variation of ever-longer hair.  His look continues to stand out as he plays for his new team, the Los Angeles Dodgers.

Another individual baseballer with a big beard is Josh Reddick, the right fielder for the Oakland Athletics  He too has a facebook site named for his facial hair.  No Faux Hawk, though.

Josh Reddick

The IRS and Bonuses for Cheaters

A disappointing IRS story was released yesterday.

Apparently $2.8 million in extra compensation and many hours of time off were given over the last two years to IRS employees who themselves were "in trouble over tax-related issues."

Specifically, 1,100 IRS employees who received $1 million in bonuses willfully understated their personal tax liabilities, made late payments and under-reported their incomes.

This information was uncovered in an audit by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration.  

According to CNN Money, the audit report says this "appears to create a conflict with the IRS's charge of ensuring the integrity of the system of tax administration."

Well, duh.

I have a better idea.  When IRS employees cheat on their taxes, don't give them bonuses.

Fire them.  

Maybe this sounds harsh, but think about it:  If you have a criminal record, could you reasonably expect to get a job at the police department?  What's the difference here?  Don't we want an agency with as much power as the IRS to maintain an internal culture of respect for adhering to the tax code?

Apparently IRS executives who don't pay all their taxes have not been eligible for bonuses for several years now (the poor things).  But there is no federal regulation against giving bonuses to lower-level tax cheats.

How stupid is that?  If you were an IRS office manager, would you really need a federal regulation to help you decide against keeping a tax-cheating auditor in your office? Wouldn't you just tell the guy to clear out his desk and dare him to sue you for wrongful termination?   

Imagine the fun a jury of taxpayers would have with a case like that.

A Late-Winter Art Walk in the Chicago Loop

On my last day in Chicago last month, I had the morning free.  I decided to walk around the Loop and see some of the many public sculptures for which the Windy City is famous.

Before I walked out the door, I asked the hotel concierge for a map of the Loop.  He gave me a large map of greater Chicago with a thumbnail-sized inset of the Loop.

Not much help.  So I made some notes and struck out on my own, asking many times for guidance as I got lost, repeatedly, along the way.  Chicagoans were gracious and helpful at every turn; more so, I suspect, than New Yorkers would have been.

I was particularly keen to see the three large Alexander Calder pieces in the Loop area.  Who among us has not, in our school years, made a Calder-style mobile?  To the right is a picture of one that I think resembles my own effort.

I cannot be sure about the resemblance, unfortunately.  My mobile, like many of my early art efforts, disappeared mysteriously when my parents moved to a new house.  Perhaps just as well.

My first planned stop was the garden of the Art Institute of Chicago, home to the first Calder.  Along the way, I passed this sign:

In fact, I passed a number of these signs on my walk.  Apparently ice can fall on Chicago pedestrians at any moment for many months each year.

But I wanted to see that Calder.  I forged on.

Arriving at the Art Institute, I found the garden gates locked and a sign indicating, repetitively I thought, that the gardens were closed.

No matter.  Later, back at the hotel, I found a picture of the sculpture I had missed.  Here it is:

This does not look like other Calders I have  seen, but it was bright red, definitely a color favored by the artist.  And, to be fair, the sculpture no doubt shows itself better after winter has ended, when the trees are in leaf and alliums are blooming.

Undaunted, I continued on.  My next stop was Millenium Park and its huge outdoor amphitheater, the Jay Pritzker Pavilion, which opened in 2004.  It too was closed, but here is a photo:

Jay Pritzker Pavilion

My first thought when I saw this was, wow, that looks a lot like something that Frank Gehry would design.

Walt Disney Concert Hall

Guggenheim Museum Bilbao

Turned out I was right.  The amphitheater was designed by Frank Gehry, the starchitect.

On the left are couple other Gehry designs, one that opened in Los Angeles in 2003 and another that opened in Spain in 1997.


To the right of the Pavilion was a winding footbridge leading out of the park and offering fine views of downtown Chicago.  Here, I encountered the third such sign of the morning:

The bridge, too, was designed by Frank Gehry and -- as you might expect -- is clad in brushed stainless steel panels.

(If Frank Gehry were a contractor and not an architect, I would suspect he got a good deal on a large lot of pliable metals and was working through the inventory.  But that's just me.)

Returning to the park, I was drawn to a very shiny statue that locals call the Bean.  Here it is.

Cloud Gate

In fact, the proper name of the statue is Cloud Gate.  British artist Anish Kapor designed it in polished stainless steel to reflect the sky and Chicago's handsome downtown skyline.  It's a big darn piece of art, 66 feet long and 33 feet high.  People enjoy taking pictures of their families and friends standing in its inner cavity, which is taller than any human.

There's a lot of metallic artwork in Millenium Park.

I left the park and continued on.  The air was getting colder, and the wind was starting to blow.  I drew my coat closer and wished I hadn't left my heavy sweater in my hotel room.

At about this time, I passed a donut shop.  Donut shops are not unusual, but I took a picture to share what I saw at this one.  Please inspect the picture carefully.

What you will see are two men, not clad in polar gear, sitting outside, in the Chicago cold, eating donuts and drinking coffee.

Chicagoans are tough.

I proceeded on.  There was art to see, and I wanted to see it before frostbite set in.

A couple blocks later, I encountered a large double-sided mosaic by Marc Chagall.  Here are a couple of photos.

First a larger view:

Now some detail:

As you can see, it is definitely a Chagall.

Then, not far away, I saw another statue that is known around town as the Chicago Picasso.

This work, commissioned in 1963, is 50 feet tall and weights 162 tons.  As you can see, it is definitely a Picasso.

Then it was on to the second Calder.  This one sits out in the open, in a plaza, amid three classic modern buildings designed by Mies van der Rohe.  Here it is:

This was the biggest darn Calder I'd ever seen.  It is 53 feet tall and was installed in 1974.  The name of the statue (technically a stabile in Calder parlance) is Flamingo, but I'm not sure that its shape or color suggest a flamingo to me.  Still, it is a striking presence in its setting.

I was making progress -- only one Calder to go.  This one was located in the lobby of the Willis Tower, which most of us still think of as the Sears Tower, the tallest building in the United States.  (In fact, there are plans for an even taller building to be erected in Chicago.)

I went inside the building and beheld the final Calder.  Here it is:

The title is Universe, and the work is composed of various elements, each of which moves -- in circles, mostly, but one in pendulum fashion and a few shapes that shift around a bit.  It employs the bright colors we associate with Calder, and it fills a great big multi-story lobby, which is also what you would expect to see in a building of such size.

Calder must have puzzled for a long time before coming up with something to fit that setting.

Then I turned to walk back to the hotel. I passed other sculptures on the way, but I was cold and, frankly, I had hit the point of visual overload.

Craving a nice, hot latte, I looked as I walked for a Starbucks but was unable to locate one.  This surprised me because Starbucks is reputed to have a coffee shop within two blocks of just about any office building in any city center.  Maybe my route was wrong.

One thing I did encounter on every second or third block was one of these:

Just before I got back to my hotel I stopped at a Walgreens -- I needed a bandaid for a sore spot that had developed on my little toe after walking so long in my boots.

At first, I thought I had got the wrong store.  The place was stocked with fruits and vegetables, a deli bar and beverages ranging from Coca Colas to Jim Beam Whiskey.  The actual drugstore stuff was upstairs.  Very different from drugstores in my neighborhood.

Turns out Walgreens has its headquarters in Deerfield, a Chicago suburb.

If you visit Chicago, I would definitely recommend a walk through the Loop.  The people are friendly, and there is much to see.  But, if you can, time your visit to avoid falling ice and closed attractions.