I've known a lot of slick dressers in my day, but none has ever been a refrigerator repairman. In fact, when I lived in Los Angeles and traveled all over the country for business and spent a week each month in New York City, I utilized the services of a tailor to custom design my suits, slacks and sport coats.
What I did was simply point to a page in GQ Magazine and ask the tailor to duplicate what we were looking at in the photograph, only in my size. So I do have some small concept of what fashion is, which makes what has transpired even more shocking to me.
You see, refrigerator repairmen are best known for having little fashion knowledge and thus for them to be dictating the trends worn in America and especially by women, is a little bit disconcerting.
Because the dominating feature of any refrigerator repairman's clothing ensemble is usually his jeans or slacks which, when bent over, shows an ample amount (at least a half moon) of posterior. Of course, this is done on purpose to cause a customer to want to leave their kitchen and not look over the repairman's shoulder while those repairs are being made. But how this semi-disgusting group could possibly soar to the top of the fashion world is more mysterious than how a peanut farmer could become president, an airline could go broke and a newcomer could find a house in Dickinson.
Nevertheless, for nearly a decade teenage males have been mimicking refrigerator repairmen and wearing their jeans and pants at such a low level so as to not only expose their posterior while bending over but also while ordering in line at McDonald's, saying the Pledge of Allegiance, skateboarding and even during communion.
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In addition, women between the ages of 12 and 40, who are now frequently wearing very tight, flared hip-hugging jeans, are traveling down a similar path with greater consequences. And the single industry that has been most affected by this trend is that which produces underwear, even giving rise to a cultural phenomenon known as the "panty."
You see, panties are the great-great-grandchild of "bloomers," which were invented in the 1850s by Elizabeth Miller and made popular by Amelia Bloomer. They were long baggy pants ending at the ankles and were also called knickers or knickerbockers and by the 1920s they were beginning to get shorter as the hemline of skirts began to rise.
Then the post-World War II period emphatically emphasized female freedom, dominated by a bra-panty culture with women's rights somehow becoming mixed up with exposure of the female form. At this point, the least amount of material was turned into a costly piece of garment and the smaller female undergarment made its dominating presence felt.
Today, more than a piece of clothing that covers and comforts, the panty has become an object of sexuality and given rise to such terms as the panty-line or visible-panty-line, which is apparently something to be avoided with greater urgency than an atomic blast, a broken leg and hair on an upper lip, giving rise to another phenomenon known as the "thong."
Viewed from the front, the thong fools you into thinking it's a bikini bottom until you see the back where its material is reduced to the size of a hole on the top of a salt shaker, with a thin waistband and a thin strip of material, designed to be worn between the buttocks, that connects the middle of the waistband with the bottom front of the garment.
Now, according to a consumer survey performed by the Cotton Incorporated Lifestyle Monitor, U.S. women own an average of 19 pairs of underwear with the global underwear industry estimated to be worth well more than $30 billion, all of it being greatly affected by the dressing habits of fashionably challenged refrigerator repairmen.
Which proves that, as Elizabeth David, the British cookery writer said, "Every day holds the possibility of a miracle."
Holten is a freelance writer and cartoonist from Dickinson.
