Ask a teenage girl to put her dungarees in the laundry hamper, and she’ll probably give you a blank stare. She won’t know what you’re talking about. In a way, it’s understandable, because today’s so-called jeans are a far cry from the dungarees we knew as youngsters.

Dungarees were functional pants meant to withstand a lot of wear and tear. Most men wore them to work (farmers, fishermen, mechanics, factory workers and others) unless, of course, they worked in an office where dungarees were not a part of the acceptable dress code. Ladies both young and old generally wore dresses and skirts unless they were handling a particularly dirty task.

Dungarees were cheap, relatively speaking. Dress pants were reserved for just that — dress. Most of the dungarees were made of heavy, durable denim, a practical material designed to withstand a lot of abuse.

Today’s jeans manufacturers, on the other hand, don’t worry much about durability. Their main focus is style, aimed at enticing potential buyers, most of them young. While females generally tend to worry more about looks than functionality, males, too, are caught up in the need to be stylish, too, when they step out in public in their jeans.

At the present time, the trend could change tomorrow, it appears that having rips and tears in your jeans is the in thing. Remembering back to the days when you’d be highly embarrassed if your dungarees had a tear in them, today you’d be right in style. Of course, you need more than one rip, and we assume they have to be strategically placed. In some cases, it’s even appropriate to have at least one small portion of your underwear showing in your rear end.

We can recall going shopping with a teenager more than 20 years ago who spied a particular pair of jeans she wanted. You’re right, they had the coveted tears. The price tag, if we recall, was around $70. Needless to say, they didn’t leave the store with us. We left them for the next young teenager and her more understanding mother.

By today’s standards, we guess $70 is probably within reason. On a recent trip to a trendy women’s shop with the next generation, we noticed a pair of jeans priced at over $200. Assuming it was probably poor eyesight on our part, we looked again, and also checked out several other pairs on the rack. Same general price range. No thanks.

As we have already pointed out, dungarees were not meant for dress. Not so today. At dress-up affairs (not black tie, of course, but rural Maine shindigs), jeans are very common. Young ladies wear their expensive tops and their designer jeans. Men, too, often wear jeans and a sports coat.

Jeans are generally acceptable in many workplaces, and we must say we find ourselves grabbing a pair of jeans to wear for the day if we’re not going anywhere special. We don’t purposely buy any with holes in them, however. A couple of pairs with holes in the knees, which got there honestly and without taking a pair of scissors to create them, are still comfortable to wear around the house, and occasionally make it to Hannaford’s on a quick errand.

Somehow, we don’t think folks who see them are under any illusions that we paid big bucks for them.