I actually don't want them distressed at all really. I bought them because my other ones have almost gone through at the knees! I'm too 'naturally neat' to pull off holey jeans and messy buns. I wish I wasn't, but I can't look 'casually rumpled'; it goes straight through to 'dragged through a hedge backwards'. 
They're from M&S, so it's not exactly a bastion of rebel fashion. Nowhere on the online write-up did it mention they'd been cut and pulled along the pockets/hems, and it really isn't obvious on the pictures. I'm sure when I was younger you took a cheesegrater to them to get that effect yourself.
AIBU to want my new jeans to look... new?