Zippers are Really Retro

Every time I opened the fly of my jeans today, I was startled.

No, this is not the kind of opening sentence that leads into an article full of sexual allusions or erotic fantasies.

It’s something much more profane that I noticed today.

Every time I opened the fly of my new jeans today, I was startled by the fact that these jeans don’t have a button fly, but a zipper instead. These must be the first jeans I’ve owned in almost 20 years with a zipper fly.

Those of you who also own both kinds of pants probably know what I’m getting at: there’s a difference in how you open a zipper fly and how you open a button fly. So out of old habit, I’d rip at the fabric of my jeans every time I went to the bathroom today, expecting the buttons to plop-plop-plop open.

But with a zipper, ripping at the two sides of your fly won’t do a thing for you. Except maybe destroy your zipper or your jeans.

Wearing my new jeans today, it always took me a brief moment to realize that these jeans were different from what I’d gotten used to over the past two decades: they had a zipper-fly instead of a button-fly.

So if a button-fly is what’s normal for us now, is a zipper-fly the real retro?