Writing on Ripped Jeans: Is It a Fashion Statement or a Necessity

Everyday people wake up and get ready for the day. One step in doing this is deciding on an outfit that they should wear for the day. Some people strategically pick out their outfits for the day, making sure they look stylish and well put together. Others just go into their closet and pick a random outfit. When you look around at people in public, everybody is wearing different outfits. From dresses, suits, shorts and tee shirts, and jeans to dark and bright, vibrant colors everyone else is wearing different clothes. Clothing is a form of visual culture as it allows other people to express their true self. Some people like to wear clothes that make a statement or presence, and others like to just blend into the crowd. There are also people that just throw on clothes and do not care what they look like. Each of these people represent visual culture and we can use that to study contemporary culture. Jeans are one piece of clothing that we can examine for contemporary visual culture. Jeans have a variety of different styles and come in different colors, but the most interesting style is ripped jeans. Every pair of ripped jeans could be slightly different even though that particular pair of jeans could be massed produced. Over time with use and washing, the pair of jeans can change in appearance making it have a more significant meaning. I chose to research this topic because it wasn’t very popular when I was younger and the trend popped up out of nowhere to become a norm that we are used to seeing. Through this paper, I hope to find out why people wear ripped jeans, if it is socially acceptable for both genders to wear ripped jeans, and how society views people who wear these types of jeans.

The informants that I interviewed consisted of four insiders and one outsider. I selected these insider informants because I have visually seen them wear ripped jeans repeatedly, so I know they enjoy wearing this style of jeans. It's better to interview random people because I could be interviewing someone who's put on their last pair of pants and isn't actually wearing ripped jeans, or someone who just ripped their jeans that day. Although I couldn’t interview these people in person, while questioning them on the phone, I learned a lot of valuable information that would help answer the questions I had regarding the visual culture of ripped jeans. The insiders that I interviewed gave me crucial information regarding ripped jeans, why they wear ripped jeans, and what they believe other people view ripped jeans. The outsider that I interviewed although wasn’t a huge fan of ripped jeans, he had some similar opinions about how society views people wearing ripped jeans and why people wear ripped jeans. Each of the informants that I interviewed gave me different perspectives on the same issue which will help me analyze the issue from different points of view, having a non-biased understanding of the issue.

Originally, I believed that people wore ripped jeans to be fashionable and to follow popular trends. However, after interviewing my informants, I learned that this isn’t always the case. In order to learn more on why people wear ripped jeans, I asked my informants, ‘How did you start wearing ripped jeans? Does it have any significant meaning to you?’. The answers replied were very mixed. Two of them started wearing ripped jeans because they liked how trendy and fashionable the pants were. Another informant stated: “In third grade I was playing sports and ripped my jeans, which I wore anyways because my family didn’t have the funds to replace jeans that I ripped”. The last informant stated: “After ripping my jeans, I was forced to wear it due to my parents not buying me anymore pants so I can learn a lesson”. These replies show that along with the fashionable aspect of ripped jeans, some people wear it out of necessity because they either cannot afford to purchase new jeans every time the jeans rip, or their parents wanted to teach their child a lesson for the misuse of their clothes. Through these responses, the ripped jeans also had different significant meanings. For the informants that had no personal connection to ripped jeans, they both stated that ripped jeans had a significant meaning of making them feel more comfortable in their own skin and happy. One of them stated, “Ripped jeans has the significant meaning of growth to me. It reminds me on where we use to be and how much we have grown regarding money”, while another noted, “Ripped jeans represents important lessons that I have learned growing up”. Although being fashionable and trendy is one of the more popular reasons why people would wear ripped jeans, some people have more personal reasons which can visually show a difficult part of their life they had grown from. They continue to wear ripped jeans to remind themselves that life gets better.

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Even though people wear ripped jeans, not all rips in jeans are acceptable to wear. Most people do not want to wear jeans that have rips that expose too much skin, and the location of the rip plays an important part if the pair of jeans is acceptable. This was apparent when questioning my informants about how long rips could be in jeans. My outsider stated that “people can have any size rip that they want”. However, most of my insider informants disagreed with that statement. The general consensus from the insiders that I interviewed is that the rip should not be bigger than six inches, or big enough that your knee would go through the hole. When asked how high the rips can go, all my informants agreed that the rips should go no further than mid-thigh. My outsider believed that if people who wore jeans with rips higher than mid-thigh can be seen as promiscuous. One informant stated: “If the rips go higher than mid-thigh, then it is too close to the groin area, and undergarments could show if the rips are big enough”. When asked if it is meaningful when the rips in jeans grow through use or washing, all my informants stated that it was not really that meaningful, and that it just reduced the wearing life of the jeans. Based on these answers, all my informants agreed that ripped jeans are only acceptable to wear during casual events.

Before I interviewed my informants, I believed that rips were just rips, and that people that wore ripped jeans are either too lazy to patch up the rips or just want to show some skin. However, this is not the case as creativity and self-expression plays a large part in the rips in jeans. The rips allow people to customize their jeans to their liking so that it fully represents themselves. When asked if they would ever modify or customize their jeans or if they just buy pre-ripped jeans, most of my interviewees stated that they bought pre-ripped jeans. This is because “ripping your own jeans is a lot of work if you don’t want it to look bad”, stated one insider. On the other hand, another one was an informant who actually customized her jeans and liked to do it as she was able to repurpose a pair of old jeans giving them something ‘extra’ that she believed they need to be more trendy and she liked the freedom ripping your own jeans gave. She also believed that if the customization was done correctly, it can be more impressive than store bought jeans. The informants that bought store bought jeans had around two to three pairs, while the informant that customized their jean had around five to six pairs. From these answers I determined that the people that bought pre-ripped jeans had fewer pairs then people who customized their jeans because the people that ripped their own jeans like to rip their jeans and each of their jeans had more sentimental value to them because they had some action on how they look.

When you look around at people wearing ripped jeans, you mostly see females wearing them, but when my informants were asked if they believed that only certain genders should wear ripped jeans, both male and female interviewees stated no. One informant stated: “I do not think that only certain genders can wear ripped jeans because I do not view fashion and clothing as gendered concepts”. While hearing this answer, it made me think about how no one judges you on what you wear unless it is inappropriate for the situation you are in. Although clothes can be labeled as male and female specific clothing, any gender is free to wear that piece of clothing as long as they are comfortable with their appearance. However, when asked what the age cut should be for people wearing ripped jeans, the replies were not as accepting. All my informants stated that the age cut off for people wearing ripped jeans is around twenty-nine to thirty years old. This is because they associate younger people with ripped jeans instead of older individuals.

This ideal on younger people wearing ripped jeans continued on how society views people who wear ripped jeans. When asked what kind of people wear these types of jeans, the general answer from my informants were younger, fashionable, stylish, and trendy people are the individuals who wear ripped jeans. In addition, with the ideal of younger people wearing ripped jeans, society also views those individuals in more of a negative light depending on what generation that person was born in. The older generation does not understand the trend and associates people wearing ripped jeans with a lower social class. They also react very negative to the trend often times making comments such as ‘Do you not own real pants?’ or ‘Can you not afford good pants?’. The younger generation is very different because half of them wear ripped jeans and half of them are indifferent to the trend. All this show that society doesn’t have on opinion on people wearing ripped jeans. They have multiple opinions based upon what generation they are from because of the difference in values that they were taught when younger.