It's not just Sydney Sweeney: The US always fights over jeans

The American Eagle Outfitters Inc. Sydney Sweeney “Good Jeans” controversy took place at the end of July – a lifetime ago in interneters – but here we are halfway through August, and people are still talking about it. One of the latest references took place last Friday, when Dr. Phil, furious that liberal fault with the advertisement, announced plans to buy American Eagle Blue Jeans for every woman in his family. It is easy to read this episode to even more evidence of our broken civil discourse. But what if it is simply the latest front in the decades -long battle over the meaning of blue jeans? It is part of our common culture, yes, but they have a long history to “cause” some group – the inevitable consequence of the fact that so many groups think that these ubiquitous and recognizable garment belongs to them. The name of one man is inseparable from the birth of Blue Jeans: Levi Strauss. In 1873, one of his clients – a partner named Jacob Davis, who was based in a mining village in Nevada – approached him with a statement. Davis explained that he made difficult pants from denim what he bought from Strauss. These pants, reinforced with metal nails, appeared popular with miners, and Davis wanted Strauss to help him build the business. The two men obtained a patent for the design, and soon founded a company to sell the pants and dropped them to miners and cowboys who wanted to handle clothes that could handle wear and tear. Other companies also came into the business, and the next half -century became blue jeans – then known as ‘middle’ – popular in a broad struggle of the country’s working class. Look at the iconic photos of working Americans taken during the Great Depression, and one thing stands out: Virtually everyone wore blue jeans, along with their close cousins, denim coverage and overalls. It was the uniform of the masses – the ordinary people who worked in factories and on farms. And if it stayed like that, there would be no opportunity for this column. In the same decade, however, there was another trend that proves a merger of things to come: the cultural appropriation of blue jeans as a fashion statement. The first offenders were wealthy Americans who started visiting so -called “dude ranches” in the West. To socialize with cowboys and other ‘authentic’ Americans has led a fashion gear to focus on ‘Dude Ranch Duds’, with Levi Strauss & Co. in the lead role. The company even launched the first Blue Jeans for Women in 1934: Lady Levi’s. In the process, Blue jeans associated with a functional garment associated with the working-class Americans to something that is much more malleable: a literal cloth through which carriers broadcast their identity. And broadcast what they did. Jeans became ubiquitous thanks to Marlon Brando. Long before he became a household name, Brando refused to hold the dress that aspiring actors followed. “During what his blue or Blue Jean period can be called, Brando went all over such clothes,” reports The Washington Post in a breathtaking profile of the star. Receptionist and gatekeepers at talent agencies and in Hollywood “mistook him for a man who came a broken pipe or was the windows.” Brando translated his own style on the screen, starting with the wild, where he played the Jean-Dra leader of a biker gang who takes over a small town. White middle class high school students and university students loved the appearance and immediately adopted it as their own. Their elders were not amused. In 1957, the New York Times informed readers that Blue Jeans, formerly a healthy clothing, had a bad representative. “Since the ‘motorcycle boys’ started wearing blue jeans in a neat way, many schools across the country have banned this dress from the classroom,” the newspaper reports. By the 1960s, the offending power of jeans exploded, especially after becoming the uniform of the youthful tribes that made up the counterculture. Protesters from the Vietnam War wore jeans embroidered with peace marks, while feminists wore jeans, not skirts, to claim equal rights. Civil rights protesters have seized the incidence because it reflects the denim carried by addicted people and cards – a subtle suggestion that not much has changed in the segregated South. From there, the Jean Wars only intensified. On the one hand, Bell Bottoms became the signature of the radicals of the 1970s. By 1980, jeans slimmed, but in some circles associated with falling morals. In that year, a then 15-year-old Brooke Shields appeared in a series of highly sexualized ads for Calvin Klein-Jeans who decided social conservatives. At the same time, a conservative counter -revolution jeans began to regain for themselves. After Ronald became President, he broadcast an image of himself as a farm that was happiest with his beloved blue jeans. George W. Bush watched the same and ran with it when he was president, who helped regain jeans for conservatives. Since the Sydney Sweeney Jeans Controls is gradually fading out of the spotlight at least as much as it can in the hostile political climate of today, where it will from time to time appear again-it is worth remembering that the stir around denim is far from unquestioned. And in an era in America feels as little known, that feeling of Déjà vu may be a guide to navigating similar cultural wars. More from Bloomberg opinion: This column reflects the author’s personal views and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial or Bloomberg MP and his owners. Stephen Mihm, a professor of history at the University of Georgia, is co -author of “Crisis Economics: A Crash Course in the Future of Finance.” © 2025 Bloomberg MP This article was generated from an automatic news agency feed without edits to text.