Apparently My Dirty Laundry Is Chic

On the left are Josh's pants. He wore them out moving up to 17 tons of hay per day (by hand) in the hottest days of summer and the coldest days of winter to supplement his teacher's salary so our family can live comfortably. He bought them on sale at the local farm supply store for $30.00.

On the right are Nordstrom's pants. Someone saw a hard-worker wearing dirty jeans and decided they looked cool, so they designed them, manufactured them, and advertised them so people could feel rugged comfortably. You can buy them at your local Nordstrom.com for $425.00.

Here's a direct quote from the website:
"Heavily distressed medium-blue denim jeans in a comfortable straight-leg fit embody rugged, Americana workwear that's seen some hard-working action with a crackled, caked-on muddy coating that shows you're not afraid to get down and dirty."

We need to talk.

If you're interested in buying these pants, I'd like to make you an offer. Honestly, if you're interested in buying these pants, what I'd really like to do is push you and your designer clothes in a mud puddle, but that's not how my parents raised me. So I won't call you a poser or a rich brat. Instead, here's my offer:

For the same price you would have spent on these jeans, you can come to Idaho and make your own. You can live with us for a month. We'll buy you a pair of good work pants and every day I'll take you to work for a dairy farmer, a rancher, a mechanic, a logger, a wildland fire fighter, a grower, a builder, a road worker, or any other get-dirty profession we can find. We'll even spend some Saturdays with the backyard do-it-yourselfers.

You can move pipe, vaccinate and castrate livestock, muck out stalls, plow fields, crawl under cars, pound nails, pour concrete, and wake up in the middle of the night to save a newborn animal. Your pants will have the most authentic vintage patina you've ever seen.

I don't live on a farm, but after your work day is done, you can help me plant my garden, muck out the chicken coop and fertilize the fruit trees. You can help me with the laundry, too, because we need to talk about wearing clean clothes when the work is finished.

If that's all a little too "down and dirty" for you, I have another suggestion. Instead of giving $425.00 to Nordstrom for some fake mud on jeans, find a charitable organization in your community that could use some help and give your money to them. And maybe even some of your time.

What it all comes down to, is that the hard-workers of the world don't find your mimicry endearing. It's at best annoying, and in truth, insulting. We get muddy to feed our families. Our hands are calloused and cut to put food on the table and we worry when we wear out our clothes because we can't always afford new ones until the next paycheck. That's not a complaint. The hard-worker is proud of work well done, The lifestyle we choose doesn't always bring in the big bucks, but it's a good way to live. A way to build and be part of a community. So if you want muddy pants, I hope you'll get out there and make them yourself.

And if you still don't get it, I'll sell you Josh's for $300.