Boot-cut, flared, knee-length or low-rise—for small-town India’s rebels, denim’s the weapon of choice
Nancy Parihar’s rebellion starts from her head. The 20-year-old’s curls are streaked a bold blonde, but it’s her tight-fitting jeans that are a badge of non-conformity in Kanpur, where some colleges recently banned jeans on campus. Far from the upscale neighbourhoods of the city, where mannequins in garment stores reflect her aspirations, Nancy can feel disapproving stares as she moves into the narrow streets of her neighbourhood, Shastri Nagar in Kanpur, one of the major cities in Uttar Pradesh.

Certainly, this isn’t the neighbourhood where cigarette jeans or the knee-length denim capris would go unnoticed. But Nancy is unfazed. She is the small-town girl getting ready to take on the world just like the others in thousands of smaller cities, towns and villages in India. The denim is their weapon of choice.

“The world is changing. Who wants the behenji look? We didn’t wear jeans until Class 10 here. But in 2006 when Kareena Kapoor wore bell bottoms in Mujhse Dosti Karoge, I had to get a pair of my own,” says Nancy who was the first to wear the “dreaded” apparel in Shastri Nagar.
Her tight-fighting midnight-blue jeans, says Nancy, helps her get her message across. She wants her jeans to say that she is someone with disposable income, a modern, liberated young woman, and one who knows that other women will envy her style. She says, “It just says that we have evolved. We are getting there.”

... contd.