Fashion
Jeans vs. Leather
Lil' Kim: Denim Diva
This Grammy Award-winning rapper has the dubious distinction of preferring to pair her jeans with pasties, or even nothing at all. Kim's penchant for chest-baring reached critical mass at the 1999 MTV Video Music Awards, at which Diana Ross famously fondled her purple-pastied breast. For her 2000 album Notorious K.I.M., she appeared shirtless, with jeans pulled down dangerously low on her hips. Seems like this rapper sees jeans less as wholesome American work pants and more as a provocative opportunity for body display.
Jessica Simpson: These Shorts Were Made For Gawking
The short denim cut-offs that took their name from Catherine Bach's Daisy Duke character on The Dukes of Hazzard in the early '80s were resurrected in 2005 when Jessica Simpson donned them to play Daisy for the movie. Her "These Boots Are Made for Walkin'" video, in which she paired the shorts with cowboy boots, changed her from a fluffy pop starlet into a bona fide sex symbol, if not a bona fide screen star.
Melissa Etheridge: Button Fly-Girl
Drawing on the denim-clad American rocker tradition, Etheridge appeared on two album covers in jeans. The first cover, Never Enough, released before she came out, shows the singer from the back, shirtless, with a guitar resting on her hip. The second, Skin, moves away from the typical rock chick pose to a more masculine image, showing a large belt buckle emblazoned with the letter "E" on a pair of button-fly jeans, a perfect expression of the rugged lesbian cool Etheridge has come to embody.
Willie Nelson/The Highwaymen: Southern American Classic
The founder of the "outlaw country" genre is fond of bandannas, braids, pot and denim — not necessarily in that order. Nelson is a Texas native known for his work with Farm Aid, and he is the ultimate symbol of country's down-home image, in which true-blue denim plays an integral part. Nelson's fellow members of the Highwaymen, Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings and Kris Kristofferson knew about denim's symbolic value all too well when they posed for the cover of their 1995 album The Road Goes on Forever in jeans.
