Are You Too Old For a Jean Jacket?
Do you ever open your closet door, ogle that threadbare denim Levi’s jacket and ask yourself, “Am I too old for that? Will I look like some adult trapped in an arrested development status pod? Will people laugh at me and say, “Look at that old bag, trying to emulate youth! What a tool!”
Or, are you old enough not to care? Does squeezing your arms into those denim arm tubes remind you of smoking in an alley, making out with someone else’s boyfriend, and living like there’s no soccer mom awaiting you in your future stuffing snack sacks?
I was skimming an article in the Times about Sarah Palin. Skimming — so I may have missed the point. I’m guessing the question the article posed was, “Is Sarah Palin too old to wear a jean jacket?” Jean jackets are part of American youth culture and she’s 58.
My best friend from high school, now in her 50s, recently visited. She said she needed to buy a new jean jacket. She’s one of my unmaterialistic friends, so I bet her last jean jacket, from high school, finally wore out — dissolved into the ether of herstory, a relic that held decades of memory in its fabric.
Jean jackets are rugged. They come from a time you didn’t reboot your style every year. Jean jackets were like witnesses. They traveled, like sidecars…
