Comments on: Did Brigham hate your 501′s?

By: Greg Call

Greg Call — Thu, 26 Oct 2006 23:42:17 +0000

Yep, it’s me Joel. My kids have questions for you about the window.

And thanks for your research, Katya. At least we now know it was someone upstream of Sullivan that took some off-stage banter at a Heber C. Kimball address and turned it into a Brigham Young quote.

By: Katya

Katya — Wed, 04 Oct 2006 22:22:46 +0000

Re: #3

\”The source most often sited on the Internet for the â€œfornication pants quoteâ€? appears to be Jeans: A Cultural History of an American Icon, by James Sullivan (Gotham, 2006). He in turn got the quote from the book Let There Be Clothes: 40,000 Years of Fashion by Lynn Schnurnberger (Workman, 1991). Borderâ€™s didnâ€™t have it in stock, but Amazon lists some used copies for sale starting at $3.97 + shipping.\”

Sorry I\’m coming to this so late; it took a while to track down the book through inter-library loan. Here is the quote, in its entirety:

\”The 1830s bring on an innovation that spells relief – that\’s when men\’s trousers button down the front for the first time (The silk band that runs down the sides of tuxedo pants recalls the old tradition of side buttoning.) One of the few opposed to the new style is Mormon leader Brigham Young. Appalled, he dubs them \’fornication pants.\’ \” (p. 267)

There is no citation, and there are no notes or bibliographical references to suggest where she might have gotten the quote. (Also, there is no index. It took me forever to find the quote by flipping through the pages!)

By: Joel Hinckley

Joel Hinckley — Tue, 03 Oct 2006 17:55:24 +0000

Como? is that you?

By: Adam Greenwood

Adam Greenwood — Tue, 03 Oct 2006 04:13:14 +0000

Rock band? Pshaw.

HERMAPHRODITE PANTALOONS would be the best name for a bloggernacle blog ever, making all us T&S and M*’s and, heaven forbid, BCC’s feel like the insipid little dishwater parvenu milksops that we are. Maybe I’ll adopt it as my second moniker, the way Aaron Brown did with ‘DKL.’

By: John Mansfield

John Mansfield — Fri, 29 Sep 2006 13:18:50 +0000

Henry Eyring, then first counselor in the Presiding Bishopric, outlined the Orderville pants story in his conference talk "Remembrance and Gratitude"

By: dangermom

dangermom — Fri, 29 Sep 2006 06:16:21 +0000

I have heard the Orderville/lambtails story, but have never heard the problem attributed to Levis, simply to a new style of pants. However, I have here a copy of “Building the City of God,” by Arrington, Fox, and May, and in reading the chapter on Orderville, I see that while the desire for new and more stylish clothing seems to have played a part in Orderville’s demise, it was in fact a much more complex situation than that. In the long run, Orderville was not an advantageous system, though it was very successful as a short-term strategy. Eventually, it was not flexible enough to compete economically with its neighbors, for several reasons.

I am hereby putting “hermaphrodite pantaloons” on my list of favorite phrases, right under “heckalopter.”

By: grego

grego — Fri, 29 Sep 2006 03:38:49 +0000

“Then, brethren, encourage our young men to marry, and SEE THAT THEY ARE FURNISHED EMPLOYMENT, so that they can marry.”

No wonder so many leave BYU single. :(

By: Kevin Barney

Kevin Barney — Fri, 29 Sep 2006 03:10:57 +0000

I’m guessing that “hermaphrodite” was a precursor to our more modern complaints of unisexism.

By: Julie M. Smith

Julie M. Smith — Fri, 29 Sep 2006 03:02:16 +0000

“that gets us no closer to what â€˜Hermaphrodite Pantaloonsâ€™ might mean”

Nope, but as Dave Barry would say, that would be an excellent name for a rock band.

By: maria

maria — Fri, 29 Sep 2006 02:33:16 +0000

The Levi story is most definitely from Orderville…in fact, the Levi-wearing rabble-rouser was my ancestor. The whole United Order crumbled after that…