This New Book Celebrates Your Butt’s Best Friend: An Epic Pair Of Levi’s

If you've never put on a second-skin pair of vintage Levi's that have been so moulded by years of being smushed up against your butt that they maintain your body's shape even when hung up, you're missing out. There's a club of women out there who've found their dream jeans at a swap meet, eBay dig, or thrift shop and know about the magic force within their 501s (or 505s or 701s). A new book by photographer Kava Gorna celebrates this relationship between a woman and her Levi's. Called 100 Cheeks, the collection of images lets 50 women (and their 50 butts) sing the praises of a damn good pair of jeans.

As one of the subjects Thessaly La Force writes in the intro, “The jeans I found were made for a man, but there’s a tribe of women these days who enjoy how the cut hugs their body. It’s difficult to imagine any other item in my closet that is so ubiquitous, and yet, no one pair is ever the same after they’ve been worn in and washed.”

The women featured in the book revolve around Gorna and her lens, dipping into her life for a short-term project on friendships that have existed for longer than they haven't. These women are thick and thin, old and young, and cut from every other cloth you can imagine. The one thing they all have in common is that they all have a pair of vintage Levi’s jeans that they — and their “epic booties,” as Gorna and La Force refer to them — love to wear. Click through to see 10 such stories, as told by Gorna herself.

100 Cheeks can be bought online here.