American Eagle's Highly Successful New Sydney Sweeney Ad Campaign is Accused of Being 'Master Race Propaganda' and Promoting 'Eugenics'

It all seemed so simple. And like so many seemingly simple ideas, it was brilliant. Take America's most popular sex symbol. Put her in the quintessentially American article of clothing. With a Ford Mustang, perhaps the most iconic of all American cars. Show images of her looking amazing in your product. Do wonders for your business. 

And, as Hubbs reported last week, it worked to perfection. American Eagle partnering up with Sydney Sweeney proved the oldest, and simplest, law of marketing: Sex sells:

Personally, this news felt like much more than just a company making a great business decision with just the right celebrity endorser. It seemed like this could be the start of something much bigger. A shift in the zeitgeist. The great cultural pendulum swinging back toward the center. An end to the last few years of identity politics invading everything. And legendary brands attaching themselves to often bizarre, avant-garde ad campaigns that only alienate their customer base. Like Jaguar's disastrous commercial that looked like something out of a fashion designer's bad acid trip, and didn't even mention that they make and sell high-performance automobiles. Which tanked their sales:

So yes, the success of the American Eagle-Sydney Sweeney team up gave me hope that we've finally begun to steer the culture back toward something recognizable to those of us who remember when advertising was all about triggering a release dopamine. When ads were either sexy or funny or inspiring. When ballgames would be interrupted with Cindy Crawford slow walking toward a vending machine in a pair of Daisy Dukes. Or Bob Uecker, Rodney Dangerfield and John Madden arguing over the qualities of a lo-cal beer. Or Mean Joe Green tossing his sweaty, blood-soaked jersey to a young fanboy. 

I hoped. But while this particular marketing campaign has paid AE immediate dividends, it also proved we have a long way to go. Here are the top comments on Sydney's Instagram post of the commercial:

And her followers on the 'Gram are by no means alone:

Salon -  American Eagle’s new fall campaign starring Sydney Sweeney is under fire—not for the jeans, but for the tagline: “Sydney Sweeney Has Great Jeans.”

The phrase, used in bold on billboards in Times Square and Las Vegas, was designed as a denim pun. But online, many saw something else: “great genes,” a phrase historically used to celebrate whiteness, thinness and attractiveness. This makes this campaign seem to be a tone-deaf marketing move.

And it’s not like they were being subtle about it. One campaign advertisement literally has Sweeney “painting” over the words “great genes” to become “great jeans.”

“Maybe I’m too … woke,” one viral post read, “but getting a blue-eyed, blonde, white woman and focusing your campaign around her having perfect genetics feels weird…” Others described the slogan as too close to “master race” propaganda and said it echoed eugenics-era language used to validate and promote the superiority of white beauty.

Eugenics movements in the U.S. often promoted the idea of “good genes” to encourage reproduction among white, able-bodied people while justifying the forced sterilization of others. Critics say those ideas still show up in modern advertising and influencer culture, often unexamined. …

One commenter summed up the tension: “It’s not just about the jeans. It’s about who gets to be the face of America’s ‘best genes.’”

Here's a random sampling of some of the more unhinged voiced equating this noble attempt to sell denim pants to women with a certain evil ideology that took power in Europe in the decades after the Treaty of Versailles:

So while the idea of putting an objectively pretty woman in their clothing and have her make puns about pants and genetic codes has gone over like gangbusters on Wall Street, it's apparently not going over with America's population of sad women with pierced noses who work through their depression issues by speaking into their phones and posting on TikTok. Though I don't get the impression this is American Eagle's target demo. 

The point being, this is why we still can't have nice things. There was a time when a clothing company could build an ad campaign out of the jeans/genes homonym, and people got the joke. Granted, when Calvin Klein did it, there was a bit of a controversy. But it had to do with the fact Brooke Shields was only 14:

Clearly, this ad with Sweeney was a callback/tribute to that one. And no doubt AE figured they were in the clear since she's a grown woman (very grown, and very much a woman). But they underestimated the ability of people who are professionally offended by everything to find a reason to be offended by this simple play on words. 

I'm still going to try to remain hopeful the culture is coming back to some semblance of normal. But when we still have people drawing a connection between a "genes" joke and an ideology that sent 6 million civilians to the gas chambers and killed tens of millions more in battle, we've got a long way to go still. 

Leave Sydney Sweeney alone!

Taylor Hill. Getty Images.

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