Six-pack of Pabst Blue Ribbon: $5.34.
Copy of Hillbilly Elegy (hardcover): $15.67
Designer jeans caked in fake dirt and mud: $425.
The appearance of escaping a liberal bubble: priceless … at least that seems like the inspiration for Nordstrom’s new and much-maligned “dirty jeans.” And that’s a good thing. Seriously.
If fashion sense determines consciousness, then the dirty jeans reflect a shift in the yuppie psyche, an attempt to regain a lost masculine ideal of hard work. Rather than dismissing the dirt-covered denim, conservatives should appreciate the sentiment the trousers represent.
Of course, normal people don’t get their jeans muddy at Nordstrom. They get them dirty after an afternoon of mucking horse stalls, digging ditches or hiking in the woods. Anyone in their right mind knows not to waste money on a pair of these idiotically expensive pants.
But Sen. Ben Sasse misses the point when he quips that dirty jeans signal the end of the American experiment in democracy. And Mike Rowe goes overboard when he describes them as “a costume for wealthy people who see work as ironic.” The jeans aren’t a mockery. In reality, they’re the best kind of cultural appropriation.
Just like the Romans copied Greek culture, coastal elites are now trying to borrow flyover country fashion. Though laughable, the attempt is still laudable because it recognizes the inherent value of a kind of physical toil that’s generally unavailable in the concrete jungles of Brooklyn or Los Angeles.
Does that change the fact that these pants are a completely stupid waste of money? No. And does that mean that the dirty jeans don’t reflect a worthwhile sentiment? Not at all. Nordstrom’s phantasmagorical denim allows the yuppie or hipster to participate in the ideal of handwork — albeit one leg at a time.
Already most of the world does this anyway. While plenty of people wear them for work, jeans obviously aren’t just for cowboys or lumberjacks. They’re worn in this country because they are comfortable and they’re worn around the world because they’re inherently western.
So make fun of this ridiculously delusional conception of what Middle America looks like. Mock the urbane for wasting money on jeans they could probably pick up at a thrift store for less than ten bucks. But don’t dismiss the underlying motivation. After all, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and dirty blue jeans are the closest many can come to looking like a rural American.
Levi Strauss would be ecstatic, and conservatives should be, too.
Philip Wegmann is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
