A varsity jacket was the epitome of cool back when I was growing up in the late 1980s in suburban Washington, DC. If you wore a varsity jacket, you were an athlete. You had status; you belonged .

Has the American teenager's once ubiquitous cloak of status and personal achievement been relegated to the Goodwill rack of history? The letterman's jacket has been the uniform of American boys ...

She was shocked, she said, when school officials told him to remove the jacket because he’s not a varsity player. [Wisconsin teenager forced to live in basement, wear diaper, police say] ...