43. Blue Jeans

The symbol of the times is blue jeans not just blue jeans in good 1) condition 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) compete with one another to offer jeans that are made to look as though they’ve just been 3) discarded by clumsy house painters after ten years of wear. The more faded and seemingly ancient the garment, 4) the higher the cost. Dishevelment(松散杂乱) is in fashion; neatness is obsolete(过时的).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) current usage is more reflective of a slavish conformity than a desire for 6) ease. No generation has 7) strained harder than ours to affect a casual, 8) relaxed, cool look; none has succeeded more spectacularly in looking even though it had been 9) stamped out 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) calculated and phony deprivation. We shun(回避，躲开) conventionality, but we put on a uniform to do it.