Actress Eva Mendes recently tweeted “sweatpants are the #1 cause of divorce in america.” She caught a lot of flak from sweatpants-wearing Americans who took her correlation of fashion and marriage seriously. She tried to break the ice by posting a photo of her sweatpants on Instagram with the caption: “”Dear favorite pair of sweatpants. I was just kidding when I said you’re the #1 cause of divorce. Everyone knows that orange crocs are the #1 cause of divorce,” she joked. Even her husband Ryan Gosling felt the need to defend Mendes: “Obviously sweatpants thing was a joke. Wearing them now. That’s right, tweeting in sweatpants. Rats! Said too much! You win again Twitter.”
Before Twitter and Instagram there was Seinfeld to ignite such debates. In the Seinfeld episode “The Pilot,” George Costanza gets into the habit of wearing sweatpants. Jerry Seinfeld confronts him:
JERRY: “Again with the sweatpants?”
GEORGE: “What? I’m comfortable.”
JERRY: “You know the message you’re sending out to the world with these sweatpants? You’re telling the world, ‘I give up. I can’t compete in normal society. I’m miserable, so I might as well be comfortable.'”
