RUGGED INDIVIDUALISTS

Why do white guys in rural America wear checkered flannel shirts?

I spent a fair amount of time in the boonies this past year, starting with almost a month, camping out in Colorado and Utah, where checkered flannel shirts were the uniform of choice with all the white men and boys. See, that’s the thing, nobody makes farmers, ranchers, loggers, miners, or just plain fellas, living in the rural heartland of America, wear checkered shirts. It’s purely voluntary. WHY?

For some unknown reason, wearing a Pendleton shirt, or some knockoff of such, became synonymous with being a rugged macho man. Look at an LL Bean catalogue, a TV commercial for off road trucks, the latest episode of “Yellowstone”, or a news feed from some godforsaken place in the Midwest that just got wiped out by a monster tornado, and you will see a guy with scraggly beard, wearing a checkered flannel shirt. WHY?

When I lived that manly life, working or the Forest Service at the Grand Canyon, I didn’t own any other kind of shirt. And all my friends and coworkers did the same. WHY?

They say that “clothes make the man“. And if that’s true, then checkered flannel shirts make a tough guy — or at least give off that vibe.

We humans are joiners. We love our teams, clubs, packs, bands of brothers, crews, and homies. It feels good to fit in. And flannel shirts fit real nice.