43. Blue Jeans

The symbol of the times is blue jeans not just blue jeans in good 1) ___ but jeans that are frayed, torn, discolored. They don’t get that way naturally. No one wants blue jeans that are crisply clean or spanking new. Manufacturers recognize a big market when they see it, and they 2) ___ one another to offer jeans that are made to look as though they’ve just been 3) ___ by clumsy house painters after ten years of wear. The more faded and seemingly ancient the garment, 4) ___. Dishevelment(松散杂乱) is in fashion; neatness is obsolete(过时的). Nothing is wrong with comfortable clothing. It is just that 5) ____ usage is more reflective of a slavish conformity than a desire for 6) ___. No generation has 7) ___ harder than ours to affect a casual, 8) ___, cool look; none has succeeded more spectacularly in looking even though it had been 9) ___ by cookie cutters. The attempt to avoid any appearance of being well groomed(穿戴整洁的) or even neat has a quality of desperation about it and suggests a 10) ____ and phony deprivation. We shun(回避，躲开) conventionality, but we put on a uniform to do it.