Posted by Brett (Maverick) Lambert from port1.westworld.ca on February 22, 2000 at 18:47:45:
In Reply to: To Short Round and his brother Tall Square... posted by Goodsport on February 22, 2000 at 15:43:01:
: : Alright, I'll re-read the chapter logs and fix the chapter. Meanwhile, you can answer me this question: WHAT MAKES YOU THINK THERE WERE NO JEANS IN 1939! The westerners wore 'em! Well from old pics I got it looks like jeans. See ya, Shorty.
: : "Head south, thinkin' there's a part, Eazy sees Uncle Charlie, it proves God's got him and man I'm gonna miss everybody!" -Bone Thugs N Harmony, At The Crossroads(Song)
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: Actually, the denim pants of those days were not the same thing exactly as the jeans we know of today. Levi Strauss (who founded Levi's Jeans) originally made them for the miners (like coal miners and other types of miners) back in those days. Perhaps other types of hard-labor workers did too (I'm not exactly sure), but for the most part the general public didn't wear them (it wasn't considered 'fashionable', and the denim pants definitely were made for work, not fashion).
: By the 1930's, the same applies. Farmers wore denim by that point, but more in the form of overalls than pants.
: Jeans as we know it now began to appear in either the late 1940's or sometime in the 1950's, and was only then considered something that them 'young folk' (teenagers) would wear - and even then, it wasn't considered the norm for teenagers as it is today. Jeans only really started to be popular during the 1960's as a sign of the 'youth rebellion' (this was during the Vietnam War protests and stuff when the hippies emerged). In the 1970's, adults started wearing jeans either because they wanted to be reminded of their youth (which they were in the 1960's) or just so they could feel 'young' (mid-life crisis type of thing). By the mid-late 1970's and into the 1980's, it just became 'normal' to wear jeans.
The 50s WERE the decade of when they started to be popular. The 60s they were just even more common. What made denim jeans in the mainstream with teens was the likes of James Dean and Marlon Brando looking cool wearing jeans in their movies. That's when the youth majorly took off with the jeans. In the 60s, jeans were the norm with teenagers I'd suspect.
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: Hope that helped, brother of Tall Square! :)
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: -G (brother of S)