OpinionJuly 19, 2000

I had never realized how fashionable the plumbers around here are until I saw half-bare bottoms on a fashion show.

I was watching the CNN news report when they threw in one of those fashion segments -- models prancing up and down a runway in some world fashion capital, displaying the latest styles. Those reports are almost all misleading. They are rarely, as billed, a look at what's in store for us in the design of women's clothing. Most of these clothes never make it to the racks of this town or probably any other. And the forces of decency are probably glad of that because the outfits are mostly pretty skimpy.

Even if those clothes do reach the market, the cowardly women of this town won't wear them. Consequently, you never see a thing like that except on television. I have never sat out on Main Street drinking coffee when a woman came prancing along wearing nothing but Cossack boots and a swirl of misty green, see-through gauze wrapped loosely around her braless body.

You see stuff like that on the television fashion snippets all the time. But it never makes it past the runway. Instead, I sit out on Main Street drinking coffee and see women prancing down the sidewalk in logging boots, wearing jeans and a misty-green polyester ski jacket.

But I finally saw a fashion snippet on CNN that featured fashions that are not only coming here again but were very much in evidence here long before they were thought of in Paris or Milan or New York. This time it was a male fashion show on television. And as several of the male models turned and headed away from the camera in their fancy, hip-hugging trousers, they displayed a small expanse of rear cleavage.

I assume they were plumbers or carpenters. Lord knows, you see that look on men all over this town -- plumbers, carpenters, mechanics, probably me if you follow me into the garden on a day when I am wearing my baggy yardwork jeans.

These models were different only to the extent they managed cleavage while standing straight up. It is a display accomplished in this community by men who are bending over trying to fix or plant something. In fact, it is a sight so disgustingly common in this community that it makes me wonder if the fashion gurus have been here. It also makes me wonder if CNN might not consider bringing its cameras here to show the world something less than this community's best side.

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Of course, this is not the first time that the men of this community, myself included, have been unwitting sources of ideas for fashion designers. I look at the baggy clothing my teen-age grandson wears these days and I feel proud. His shirts are sloppy, large and comfy, just like the ones I wear doing yard work -- and just like all the kids his age wear.

His trousers are deliberately too large and worn at half mast -- usually with his underwear showing. That's how I and most of the older men in this town dress when fixing cars or pulling weeds or repairing the sink. It kind of heartwarming to have a generation of grandchildren who dress just like me and all the other sloppy old men.

Fashions for men and women in this country are generally a lot looser today in all generations, partly for comfort, partly in realistic tribute to how much we all eat. This country must use twice as much cloth per person as it did 20 years ago.

But not all the guys in this town use it where they really need it most. Nonetheless, what is visual pollution here is high fashion on CNN. It's about time the fashion world gave credit where credit is due. Those designers on the world runway think they are being daring but they are showing nothing that hasn't been on display here for half a century or more.

If there is any justice in the world -- or any sense of fashion heritage -- we will one day tune in to the international fashion report and see prancing there before the world your plumber, your carpenter, your mechanic, your grandpa. We pioneered that look. We have a right to show it off.

And sure, it might look a little silly, but it wouldn't be the first time the men around here have made public asses of themselves.

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