Jeans as an ideological symbol

No jeans week is an attempt to achieve social change and ideological. No jeans week is pacific way to bring awareness to social inequalities. The history of jeans is not a history of fashion clothes that conquered the world but is a history of an ideological conflict. In the USA any wage slave under capitalism had the money to buy jeans. It was an ideological manoeuvre of the capitalist ideology to question the other big ideology at the time.

Capitalism had its propaganda campaign very well plan through hollywoodian hype real movies of cowboy heroes wearing jeans. The white hero is smoking cigarettes as expression of the capitalism freedom of a society where its own people, the African-American, had virtually no civil rights. Cowboy heroes that the mean goal was kill American natives creating some sort of social entertainment but in reality it was propaganda. The hollywoodian way to distract the mass is through its propaganda of a hype reality making people forget or unaware of what really matters. In most places in the world we can find someone wearing jeans, the spread of an ideology.

The problem is not is the material jeans but the problem is jeans as a symbol. As great philosopher once said: “they are doing it, but they do not know that they are doing it”. Jeans is a symbol that capitalism gives everyone an equal opportunity. Jeans is a symbol of cultural imperialism. Jeans is a symbol the western supremacy over other forms of life. For example, one wearing jeans is much more acceptable than one earing a burka thanks to the America propaganda of Marlon Brando. Jeans is something that one wear and one feel comfortable i.e. something that one wears without any critical thinking of its roots just as many things that ideology does to this one. The underlying ideological message is that: consume even if there is no need for it is on your nature and it will make you feel good forget of the structures of this ideology that makes the life of some people a tragedy. In our contemporary society most of jeans is made in sweat shop under the exploration of many people just as the capitalist ideology had planned.

Our cheap design jeans have a massive ideological, ecological and human cost.  It has an ideological cost because it is the symbol of the victory of capitalism (and Neoliberalism) against all other forms of social thinking (Ideology). It has an ecological cost because capitalism needs the exploitation of the natural environment to keep forever growing.  And finally, it has a human cost because an ideology that creates social inequalities, it is destroying our surroundings, it is perpetuates an accepted narrative where West the exploits the East and destroy its values, it is an individual and competitive ideology. This ideology creates people to live under oppression and to live under misery. Say no to jeans as an ideological stand point.

bdeo