What are we to make of all this furor over an innocuous ad featuring a major celebrity that uses a well established pun for 45 years simply because she happens to be beautiful with blonde hair and blue eyes?
In one of the most bizarre and unexpected stories in recent memory, Sydney Sweeney, among the hottest actresses on planet Earth in more ways than one, has come under fire for her appearance in a series of denim advertisements for American Eagle, a popular clothing brand. According to Yahoo News, “American Eagle, Sydney Sweeney Take Heat for Tone-Deaf Messaging.” “Last week,” they began, “the denim specialty retailer debuted ‘Sydney Sweeney Has Great Jeans,’ its Fall 2025 campaign starring the ‘Euphoria’ actress. While the campaign aimed to highlight AE’s newest denim, shoppers were distracted by perceived undertones to the messaging.” What precisely are these supposedly “perceived undertones?” In one of the video spots, Ms. Sweeney plays on the equivalent pronunciation between “jeans” as in what one wears and “genes” as in the DNA that determines certain aspects of our physical appearance and mental make up. “Genes are passed down from parents to offspring,” she says mildly enough. “Often determining traits like hair color, personality and even eye color…my jeans are blue,” she declares punning on both the color of her clothing and her eyes followed by a voiceover stating, ‘Sydney Sweeney has great jeans.’” This, apparently, was enough for some to claim the specter of white supremacy and Nazism was once again looming over the cultural landscape, a shadow that we can never escape. “This is what happens when you have no [people] of color in a room,” one commentator claimed before alluding to the presence of Donald Trump in the White House. “Particularly in a time like this…this ad campaign got so caught up in this ‘clever’ play on words and this stunt the [people] in the room missed what was so blatantly obvious to anyone not White.” “I will be the friend that’s too woke because those American Eagle x Sydney Sweeney ads are weird…like fascist weird, like Nazi propaganda weird,” Midwesterngothic said in a TikTok video, before taking issue with the very idea of “a blond-haired, blue eyed, white woman…talking about her genes.” Buzzfeed News similarly claims that “Sydney Sweeney’s New Jeans Campaign Is Getting Backlash For Its…Interesting Tagline.” As they put it, “The criticism was swift and multifaceted,” before extending the critique from Nazism into the objectification of women in general. “For one, some questioned the hypersexualization of Sydney’s body, given that the end consumer is likely to be a woman,” they claimed while citing a social media post that complained “If your goal was selling women’s jeans to men, great job.” “Then there’s the ‘great genes’ of it all. Given the current political climate, many expressed concern that the words might act as a ‘dog whistle,’ given that there has been a rise in prominent eugenicist thinking in recent years.” To support his rise, they cited a single article in The Guardian about Elon Musk of all things, and a snippet of a poster who insisted the ad was “propaganda,” presumably for Nazis, once again especially in this “political climate.” “A white woman who has blonde hair and blue eyes saying she had ‘good jeans (genes)’ over and over should alarm you. Especially in this political climate…that commercial is intentional. ‘It’s not that deep.’ Yes, it is. This is yet another reason why media literacy is so important.”
Of course, Ms. Sweeney’s recent ads are actually an update to the famous – or infamous, if you prefer – Calvin Klein series in 1980 featuring a 14 year old Brooke Shields rolling on the floor, putting on her jeans, and discussing how “the secret of life lies behind the genetic code.” “Genes are fundamental in determining the characteristics of an individual, and passing on these characteristics to succeeding generations,” Ms. Shields said in the campaign. “Certain genes may fade away while others persist… which brings us to Calvin’s and the survival of the fittest.” Beyond the “current political climate,” once again meaning the existence of President Trump and his unexpected electoral triumph last year, the obvious connection to this and other similar ads given the jean/gene pun is an incredibly obvious one is meaningless according to the experts in these matters. As Yahoo dutifully noted in attempt to make that abundantly clear, “The difference between the two campaigns, however, is that AE’s is perceived as evoking a specific beauty standard—one historically tied to racial propaganda idealizing Aryan features such as blonde hair and blue eyes—according to Cyndee Harrison, principal at marketing and crisis communications firm Synaptic.” “When nostalgia gets selective, it gets risky. Brands have every right to lean into heritage or iconography, but they have a responsibility to vet for subtext,” she told SJ Denim, meaning she agrees with the principle that those who have blue eyes and comment on how they got them are implicitly relying on Nazi subtext, presumably because everyone who has blue eyes and blonde hair is somehow living in that legacy by virtue of their physical traits. “‘Great genes’, paired with a very specific beauty standard and the legacy of the Brooke Shields campaign evokes exclusion more than empowerment.,” she added continuing the objectification of women canard. “Creative shouldn’t just pass legal review…it should pass cultural review. That means involving people with diverse perspectives at the table from concept to launch.” To be fair, Yahoo cited at least one person who pointed out the obvious, that not every nod to the past is a “dog whistle for eugenics.” Toni Ferrara, founder and CEO of Ferrara Media, explained, “For AE [and Sweeney], the ‘great genes/jeans’ wordplay is a well-worn advertising pun, not propaganda. It’s cheeky, not sinister. Other denim brands, like Gap in the early 2000s, used similar slogans like ‘Good Genes Run in the Family,’ and no one cried fascism then.”
Beyond President Trump, MSNBC might attribute the change in reception between twenty years ago and today as part of an “unbridled cultural shift towards whiteness” because “Advertisements are always mirrors of society, and sometimes what they reflect is ugly and startling.” After dutifully noting that the “internet has been quick to condemn the advertisement as noninclusive at best and as overtly promoting ‘white supremacy’ and ‘Nazi propaganda’ at worst,” Hannah Holland proceeded to declare the “advertisement, the choice of Sweeney as the sole face in it and the internet’s reaction reflect an unbridled cultural shift toward whiteness, conservatism and capitalist exploitation. Sweeney is both a symptom and a participant.” In support of this position, she claimed that Ms. Sweeney cannot be trusted because she is in fact a capitalist herself, whose “goal as a public figure is to make as much money as possible,” shocking I know for a celebrity. She’s also not afraid to use her body to make money. “In May, she faced viral controversy for selling Dr. Squatch soap that was advertised as containing some of her dirty bathwater. The advertisements, predictably, included Sweeney ostensibly naked in a bathtub. Last month, after she attended Jeff and Lauren Bezos’ gauche wedding in Italy, news spread that Sweeney was reportedly launching a lingerie brand with financial backing from the Bezoses. The internet was outraged, condemning Sweeney for aligning herself with American oligarchs like Bezos for a paycheck” because the multibillion companies that make movies and other entertainment pursuits are apparently not-oligarchical in the least. While Ms. Holland “cannot blame Sweeney for financially benefiting from a system that is going to exploit her either way,” what grace in that regard, “her willingness to participate in such an obviously damaging — and, depending on who you ask, even dangerous — advertising campaign as the latest American Eagle collection is disappointing.” To support that claim, she blithely and rather ironically insisted, “Popular American culture is, indisputably, becoming more puritanical and more conservative. It isn’t just that far-right ideology is proliferating on the fringe; our entire cultural ethos has moved further right, allowing for this sort of content. Young women are being radicalized through so-called clean skin care and healthy eating, internet slang once used exclusively by women-hating incels is mainstream, and people are unabashedly self-identifying as fascist on public platforms.” Before wondering how a puritanical society would promote a scantily clad babe barely wearing jeans or how promoting better eating habits relates to anything at all, Ms. Holland concludes, “An advertisement that so many are condemning as a ‘eugenics dog whistle’ fits into this movement. Sweeney and American Eagle deserve much scrutiny over this, but so does our own crumbling and fractured American culture that made this all possible in the first place,” condemning all of society in the process.
What are we to make of all this furor over an innocuous ad featuring a major celebrity that uses a well established pun for 45 years? First, as if we needed more evidence that Trump Derangement Syndrome is real, the sheer number of references to the “current political climate” in the context of an ad for jeans should settle the matter once and for all. There’s nothing, and I mean nothing that can happen in any sphere, anywhere in the world, that is not viewed from the perspective of his existence, and whatever is viewed from that perspective is inherently evil. Second, jealousy is undoubtedly driving much of this. Ms. Sweeney is more beautiful, famous, and wealthy than most can dream, and she delights in using her assets, both physical and mental, to advance her career while refusing to conform to the current anti-beauty, beleaguered celebrity craze. There is a segment of the population that simply cannot stand this. Third – and again as if we needed more evidence that there are those who see white supremacy and Nazism in every shadow – there is an overlapping segment of the population that simply hates white people and to whom, white people can do nothing right. Putting this another way, if Ms. Sweeney cannot innocuously claim she has good genes given her obvious gifts, what white person possibly can? The only answer is they can’t because they have bad genes in the warped minds of their critics. In their world, you cannot be proud of your blonde hair and blue eyes without being inherently racist. Fourth, the only remedy is to put them in charge. When they claim that this is what happens when diverse viewpoints aren’t included or there were no people of color in the room, assuming that’s even true, the implicit assumption, dare I say a threat, is that they would overrule the ad, putting their judgement above Ms. Sweeney’s, who clearly is a canny celebrity operator, and everyone else involved. In other words, they would’ve censored it and so much else because they think their opinions are fact and brook no disagreement whatsoever. Anything they do not like is inherently evil, or at a minimum aligned with some of the greatest evil the world has ever seen. Fifth, these people have no joy or happiness in their lives. Their entire existence and identity is based on complaining about anything and everything, however irrelevant or unrelated to any of the supposed evils they seek to eliminate, and that’s perhaps the most dangerous and deranged thing of all.
Confessions of a Conservative Atheist 