It’s not just Sydney Sweeney — the US always fights about jeans

The American Eagle Outfitters Inc. Sydney Sweeney “Good Jeans” controversy happened in late July — a lifetime ago in internet terms — but here we are, halfway through August, and people are still talking about it, One of the latest references happened last Friday, when Dr. Phil, outraged that liberals found fault with the ad, announced plans to buy American Eagle blue jeans for every woman in his family.

- Stephen Mihm, The Independent

It’s easy to read this episode as yet more evidence of our degraded civic discourse, But what if this is merely the latest front in the decades-long battle over the meaning of blue jeans?

They're part of our common culture, yes, but they have a long history of “triggering” one group or another—the inevitable consequence of the fact that so many groups think that this most ubiquitous and recognizable article of clothing belongs to them. One man's name is inseparable from the birth of blue jeans: Levi Strauss. In 1873, one of his customers — a tailor named Jacob Davis, based in a mining town in Nevada — approached him with a proposition. Davis explained that he had been making tough trousers out of denim that he had purchased from Strauss. These pants, reinforced with metal rivets, had proven popular with miners, and Davis wanted Strauss to help him build the business. The two men secured a patent for the design (note the miner and his pickaxe), soon founding a company to sell the pants and hawking them to miners and cowboys who wanted clothing that could handle wear and tear.