What are women's jeans for?

I know you've all been waiting for an update on my quest for all-cotton women's jeans. It continues, on and off. I've ordered some online (free shipping both ways...), but am not optimistic.

While I had not initially articulated it in these terms, I've come to realize - ever since moving to the woods and not periodically replenishing on lower Broadway - that the problem with spandex/stretch in jeans is that it gets fried over time in the wash, and is thus responsible for this effect. The low-rise-ness comes from the fact that whichever material allows the jeans to look perfect in the store will, after X washes, deteriorate and cease to cover all they were meant to cover. You're left, in other words, with just the cotton, and the illusion of having lost weight, even if your non-stretch clothing items and recent rediscovery of Haagen Daaz tell a different tale. So not only is this crap material (in my opinion) the reason the dye just slides off today's oh-so-flattering dark-denim skinny-jean, but it also explains the ubiquity of low-rise, even on wearers of jeans that were not sold as such.

Above and beyond my own quest, I started getting really curious if 100% cotton women's jeans exist. I clicked on various styles from different brands to see fabric content, making a point not to bother with styles with "skinny" or "legging" in the name. And the verdict is: stretch is as ubiquitous as high-fructose corn syrup, and much in the same way - there where you expect it, but also where you don't. Old Navy, which has the most all-cotton options I've found, nevertheless puts heaps of polyester as well as stretch in its most basic style. L.L. Bean sells several all-cotton versions of the "mom," as well as one attractive variant that's plenty synthetic. A classic look from Wrangler has spandex, as do virtually all from Levi's. (One gorgeous pair is all-cotton but goes for $178, at which point you might as well go to A.P.C.)

There are many good explanations for how all denim marketed at women came to be stretchy. Factors such as the dropping cost of spandex and the desire of consumers not to feel fat - automatic vanity sizing, so much so that the reviews of all-cotton Old Navy jeans include remarks about how they're sized too small. We've come to expect stretch, so we have no real concept of what any pants size ought to feel like.

There's also the near-impossibility of finding clothes that fit properly at chain stores, which is where everyone - rich, poor, in-between - shops, paired with the continued societal insistence that things fit properly. Add 2% spandex and (until they're worn out) your jeans look made-to-measure. The necessity becomes all the more obvious when you try on pants that don't have stretch, but that are no less mass-produced. They look... wrong, in a way one is not used to anymore. They bring us back to an era when pants were sometimes unflattering, and when one might discover that pants bought three months ago no longer close.

While I have not taken this as far as bringing pants from the 1990s to the lab, my sense is that the ubiquity of stretch in women's jeans is a result of the circa-2004 trend of premium jeans. These were the $200 pairs, typically with distinctive stitching on the back pockets. Often, and differentiating themselves from the designer jeans of earlier eras, they did look massively better than the ones that came before, better shades of denim, better fit, and at the ready to be styled with a pair of heels and a sequined tank top, the going-out uniform of that era. They probably also fell apart in the wash, but they looked good in a way that the flared Mudds, Levi's, or (remember those?) Jnco's did not. Then, understandably, cheaper brands switched over to the "premium" look, using more/darker dye and increasingly more stretch, until a pair of black leggings could be defined as jeans. There is now virtually no non-premium-inspired alternative. Even "classic" jeans have stretch.

So the pros of stretch are obvious. Until the jeans fall apart, you have that once-elusive garment: a made-to-measure pair of jeans, and in an ego-flattering size, at that. And if spandex isn't as eco-friendly as cotton, you're at least not needing to buy new pairs every time your own size shifts ever-so-slightly. Also, of course, a budgetary advantage. That problem from days of yore - jeans digging into your waist and cutting off circulation when you sit down - is not such an issue when spandex is involved.

But why, if stretch is so wonderful, is it ubiquitous in women's jeans, but just about unheard-of in men's? Men's jeans, except in styles aimed at would-be Mick Jaggers, are typically 100% cotton. They look like... jeans. The way jeans used to look. And yet you don't hear men complaining that it's impossible to find a decent pair of them.

A seemingly pointless question that points to something far greater: why are women's jeans 2% spandex, men's 0%? Why is the gender difference in denim - that is, the reason for a woman to buy women's jeans, a man men's - an issue not of length and crotch-roominess, but stretch?

One possibility is that women want to believe they're a size six, while there's no male equivalent to this desire. Another, that it's expected women will buy new jeans every five minutes regardless, so there's no need to promise durability. Yes, stretch=junk, "premium" be damned, but women love shopping, so why not sell them junk?

The most likely explanation, however, is that women are expected to wear body-con everything, whereas men are penalized for doing so. Men do not have problems finding "jeans that fit," because there's no expectation that a pair of mass-produced denim pants will fit like made-to-order riding breeches. For men's jeans to fit, they need to be big enough to close, small enough not to fall down. And they hardly even need to fit - belts can hold up jeans that are too big, and beer-bellies can most certainly pour over pairs that are too small. For this reason, the only women's jeans at a non-horrendous price point to lack stretch are called "boyfriend jeans," although let it be known that "boyfriend" can become "sexy boyfriend" only with the addition of 2% spandex.

So it's progress, in a sense, that women's jeans are now at least comfortable. It's still expected that they be skin-tight, but at least now, there's less of an expectation that we ought to shape our own bodies to fit into the pants, now that the pants stretch to fit our bodies. (Soup commercials be damned.) Form-fitting no longer means circulation-destroying.

But ideally... what do we want here? Men also in jeggings? In principle, I support this sort of thing, but in practice, I remember the ubiquity of the men-in-tights look among Parisian joggers, and I don't think we want a shift in this direction. Narrow pants, yes, super-spandex, no. I suppose I'd rather see a shift in the other direction, with a redefinition of what it means for women's jeans to "fit." Something like "boyfriend" jeans, but without the more-offensive-the-more-you-think-about-it name.