[sebbie]

Part XXXXII

For some time I have been thinking about writing a few chapters dealing with snug-fitting skinny jeans. This may seem a bit off-topic from the subject of swim briefs and wrestling singlet. But I keep thinking that some of my earliest and best experiments in “self abuse” involved tight-fitting jeans. And, come to think of it, a couple of my most embarrassing instances where my fondness for my own body happened rather unexpectedly and in a semi-public setting. Still, all of these schemes have been bubbling inside me for a long time, and it is time to write about what was going on.

But, where should I start the story? The best strategy would be to start at the beginning, or at least the beginning for me. The first thing to note is that jeans styles for men go from skinny to loose and back again over very large cycles. We are currently at a point where really form-fitting jeans are at the height of fashion for men, and this latest cycle really only got going 7 or 8 years ago. The last time form-fitting jeans were really popular was when I was in high school and then in college, from about 1961-1969. In between, jeans generally got very loose or relaxed.

Maybe I can help you understand this better by talking about the brands and colors of what were then called slim fitting jeans in the decade of the 1960s. During that decade, jeans sales were dominated by two brands, Levis® and Wrangler®. There always has been two markets for jeans, a so-called western wear market and a general public non-western wear (general public) market. Western wear styles were made to go with the other aspects of the “cowboy” look A form-fitting colorful shirt with snaps rather than buttons, the cowboy hat, the leather cowboy boots etc. This was a look popular is much of rural north America, but seemed odd in most urban areas (except maybe in Texas). The tricky part is that guys always wanted to wear their jeans OVER their cowboy boots, (boots over jeans is universally thought of as nerdy) which meant that even a snug-fitting jean could taper to no narrower than a 15-16 inch cut.

Generally, the cut for western wear featured a fairly high rise and a very snug-fitting butt, along with a snug taper in the thigh, but then the taper from the knee down was less severe co accommodate the leather boot.

Levis competed with both the western wear designs and in designs for the urban public. Wrangler focused on the western wear designs with the snug-fitting butts aimed at markets the rural areas. This look was so popular in many rural areas that the guys who wore the Wranglers were referred to as “Wrangler butts.” Even today, the jeans with the iconic vinyl “Wrangler” patch on the right rear pocket are sometimes referred to as the “real” Wranglers and the ones without as not the real thing, even if Wrangler-branded.

Some of the Levis designs focused on the same western wear market to compete directly against Wrangler, such what we currently know as styles 505 and 501, and cowboys divided themselves into Wrangler or Levis guys. Levi tried to emulate the look of the Wrangler butt but somehow never quite succeeded to the extent that Wrangler did on this score.

But Levis was also selling jeans into the urban market—that is, those who would not be wearing cowboy boots, and that meant that they could make jeans that tapered much more sharply than Wrangler from the knee to the ankle. This was a long time before the addition of Elastane to denim was common, and so the minimum taper was about 13 inches.

In that same period, prewashed jeans were all but unheard of. Blue jeans were mostly sold as stiff, unwashed blue denim, with the idea that the buyer would purchase these an inch or two oversized, and via multiple washing the denim would shrink to conform to the guy’s particular body. The original 501 jeans were all shrink-to-fit with charts that showed exactly what size you need to buy in order to get a snug body-conforming fit over several washings. The 501’s probably shrunk more than, say a 936 slim-fit Wrangler jean, but guys started slightly oversized there as well recognizing that they would get the Wrangler butt fit they wanted.

Still there was another option that was very popular in the 1960s, and that was jeans made from denim that had not been dyed blue. Undyed denim is softer than dyed denim, and is an off-white color that at that point in time was referred to as “sand”. Form-fitting jeans made from sand-colored denim were very popular in the 1960s, but especially those with leg openings that tapered to only 13 inches. All the well-dressed guys were wearing them, and even Wrangler started selling their 936 slim tapered jeans in the popular sand color. It was possible to dye the off-white denim other colors, say a light blue, but none pf the other colors were ever nearly as popular as the sand color.

In the 1960s, guys my age would all seem to be vying to see who could wear the snuggest-fitting jeans, usually the sand-colored ones. Me too. Shopping for my first pair of sand-colored jeans taught me a lot about precumming and the odd situations where it would happen.


All of this ended more or less in the 70s with the introduction first of bell bottom jeans that tapered sharply through the thigh to the knee and then flared out to a 17- or 18-inch cuff. After that we went through 30 years or more of relaxed fit jeans where almost none were tapered and form fitting save the Wrangler patch jeans destined for the “cowboy” market.

To be continued…