(dis)comfort of jeans
the tension between Fitting - In & jeans that fit
Jeans are a common complaint across all participants. Every single person I have met has this deep desire to wear jeans but find there are just too many restrictive material qualities that cause sensory overwhelm. That being said, I’ve had participants lament the torture of jeans whilst sitting there wearing them. They actively choose to dress in them that morning. The emotional desire to “fit-in” overtakes their physical needs. It’s a tension that pulls back and forth; a tension I am fascinated by.
“I want to wear jeans. I want to wear the same things as my friends but they are just too stiff, I can’t relax. I only ever wear soft jogging bottoms. But look …I found some soft jogging bottoms with a denim print!”
The writer Umberto Eco perfectly articulates this tension in his ode to blue jeans Lumbar Thought. He considered blue jeans as the ultimate fashion statement. He lived for his jeans, and as a result assumed the exterior behaviour of one who wears jeans. However, he goes on to describe how pressures or obstacles in the lumbar region influences one's mood and mental agility; how the physical material qualities of the jeans interfered with his productivity and quality of work yet he could not argue against the confidence they enable him to outwardly project to the world.
“Not only did the garment impose a demeanour on me; by focusing my attention on demeanour, it obliged me to live towards the exterior world. It reduced, in other words, the exercise of my interior-ness. ”