The Jeans Dilemma

This has to do with how I’m seeing the world right now.  It’s divided into two camps: Things Which Help and Things Which Send Us Down The Crapper.  It’s like at my gym, there’s a basket of disposable plastic razors on the counter as a courtesy to the members, which is very nice of them, but I look at it and all I see is a little tub of unbiodegradable planet death – only slightly worse than the disposable razor heads I use at home or all the pricey wax and waxing strips and other painful waxing accoutrements which get tossed in the garbage every time I’m looking to avoid 5’o’clock pit shadow. 

But this isn’t about the ecological impact of smooth, hairless underarms.  This is about jeans.

I love to wear jeans.  Who doesn’t?  But I also know that conventional cotton, from which jeans are made, is a highly toxic proposition.  It’s grown with lots of oil-based fertilizers and pesticides, none of which are good for you.  In fact the EPA considers seven of the top 15 pesticides used on U.S. cotton crops to be (air quotes) "possible, likely, probable, or known human carcinogens” – and all of which deplete the soil poison our ground water, and kill far more wildlife than just cotton-munching weevils.  So, basically, cotton is hardly, as the ads say, the “fabric of our lives.”  It’s more like the fabric of our demise.

Not to mention that the denim from which jeans are made has almost certainly been dyed, emitting chlorine, chromium, and other pollutants into the environment.   Plus, the processes by which they texture jeans – stone washing and so on – involve pumice, which has to be mined.  Also not good. 

Then there’s all the shipping materials around the world, stuff made by toddlers in Chinese sweatshops which are powered by coal-fired plants, so you know coal, CO2, global warming, blah blah blah…  Basically, when it comes to jeans, we’re talking many large paving stones on the road to Armageddon.

So, then, the earth-conscious casual dresser thinks to turn to organic cotton and hemp.  The thing is, at least in Burlington, there’s only a couple places that sell green jeans, as it were.  You can also order them on line, but then here comes the hard part.

I’ve read that the average woman has to try on 50 pairs of jeans before she finds one that fits, and I’m no exception.  I’m short and curvy.  I have a 28 inch inseam, a small waist, and a bottom which, as Freddie Mercury would say, makes the rockin’ world go ‘round. 

And, I find that most “fashion-forward” organic cotton and hemp clothing (as opposed to burlap-sack-hippie-mamma-organic-cotton-and-hemp-clothing) is cut to fit the waiflike and anorexic proportions of teenage girls.  So the idea of ordering a pair of jeans which would probably fit quite nicely on my arm, then sending them back, ordering new ones, try on, send back, repeat ad nauseum seems like a time, money, and energy-wasting task of Sisyphean proportions.

So what’s an eco-gal to do?

Well, whatever an eco-gal could do, THIS eco-gal just broke down and bought a couple pairs of conventional cotton jeans which fit well and look great.  I figure I’ll wear them for years, and I just try to ignore the creepy, Love Canal sensation crawling up my legs. 

I justify this flagrantly unenvironmental behavior by the fact that I shop almost exclusively at consignment stores – that’s clothing recycling making up the majority of my wardrobe.  And yes, I admit to some really big cancer-causing-chemical denial here, but I am just not so perfect a human being that I can deal with EVERYTHING.  My Buddhist friends tell me to take the middle path.  But I’m not really a Buddhist.  I’m more Buddish.

I suppose another answer might be that I diet and exercise to the point where I can fit into the waiflike and anorexically proportioned earth-friendly jeans, but then we have a serious feminist problem replacing our ecological problem, and I’ve only just accepted myself as I am (mostly) and I will NOT willingly return to the Fallujah of Self-Esteem.  Or the Battle of the Bulge.  Pick your favorite war.  And I’m totally not ready for any Gandhiesque weaving of my own diaperwear.

Ok, so now I have a couple pairs of carcinogenic but fabulously ass-friendly jeans. They are, however, too long.  So I hem them.  Fine.  Easy.  No problem.  But now I have four six-inch-long denim tubes I have to deal with.  I guess you’d call them my toxic assets.

I believe in recycling.  I believe in cradle-to-cradle design.  I believe that nothing should ever become just waste, just garbage.  So what do I do with these?  I can’t throw them away, because then we have a solid waste problem.  I could toss them in my compost pile and hope that as they decompose, my backyard won’t become a superfund site. 

But these bits of denim also contain Lycra - not likely to become one with nature within the next few millennia.  So, into the scrap bag they go, hopefully to see another life as a patch on…something.  Or a quilt square for when civilization collapses and, like pioneer ladies of yore, I am forced to make my own bedding.

Perhaps the whole problem could be avoided by not wearing jeans in the first place at least until I find some green ones which fit.  But give up jeans?  The 4-season, dress it up dress it down, hard-traveling, easy-washing, disco to garden, socialite to redneck, banker to bull-rider, Moscow to Mexico City, ripped or creased, Sharpied or Sequined, high waisted, muffin topped, skin-tight, boxer-baggy, Levis or Luckys, cradle to grave wondergarment???

Fuck!!!!

Well, we are talking about the future of the planet here, and the whole issue of ecological footprint, and I’m not sure my few personal acres can support the whole denim-based sartorial struggle. 

I don’t have any easy answers.  Maybe by the time I need new pants, there will be a wider range of organics available to me.  Or I’ll have worried about it so much that I’ll have lost the weight needed to fit into the teeny-weenie jeanies. 

But really, I think it’s time to move from pondering these issues into making some bold choices; changing my thinking, so that any choice I make – no matter how problematic or awkward it might seem – is no longer problematic or awkward if it’s a planet-based decision.  After all what do I love more?  Displaying my beautiful shiny hiney or having a healthy world?  It shouldn’t even be a consideration.  Like wearing seatbelts or not littering.  You don’t think about it – you just do it because it’s the right thing to do.

Just.  So much easier said than done.  Well, I suppose I shall take the Buddish path, keep scootching myself as far to the ecologically pure side of things as I can, and hopefully, as our culture and economy change, the far side will soon become the middle. 

And THEN I can tackle my armpits.