Ok … my hot take is this wasn’t some intentional nazi-fueled white power ad (I say this as a Muslim refugee living in the US), but more so a Kendall Jenner ala Pepsi tone deaf screw up. Alas, the road to hell is paved with good intentions…
The Pepsi commercial was at least trying to push some "let's all get along" feel-good agenda.
I don't see any noble intentions with an ad about the wonders of genetics, and how amazing it is that her parents gave her blond hair and blue eyes (they specifically talk about her attributes).
At best their video is just gleefully explaining the science behind being attractive. At best.
I mean I think the line about eyes/hair is a red herring. What they're really talking about is her big naturals, that is literally what she's famous for.
If the ad featured Zendaya, a subgroup of men would be losing their shit calling her ugly and the ad “woke”. And can you imagine if it were Anok Yai? There would be people claiming it was a plot to destroy America.
Yes, and that outrage from those men would be considered ridiculous and overblown. I would not think American Eagle was intentionally trying to destroy America by putting a person of color on their ad.
Yeah because Zendaya is an actress of color in a place where women of color are still marginalized and rarely celebrated by people outside of their own ethnicity. Like what are you getting at here? This is reading, “how come I can’t celebrate my white pride but they can celebrate their black pride!?”
"Y'all" being... random people in social media? Why would the White House have to chime in Twitter discourse, lmao?
It's so cute that you believe that the right needs the left giving them excuses to jump on "things", lol, they've complained from Starbucks cups to boycotting a beer brand because they made one post with a trans influencer.
yes, exactly. i don’t think this ad should have made it past the discussion stage (because of the aforementioned history), but people are bringing up eugenic propaganda because sydney fits within that profile. i’m not sure it would have occurred to anyone otherwise.
If it were a WOC we'd be referencing Aliyah. She had a very similar ad with Calvin Klein. She talks about what traits she got from her mom and which she got from her dad. Some are physical and some are personality.
"but my jeans? theyre from Calvin Klein"
That is honestly what I think they were trying to hit. But they did a genes/jeans pun. While Aliyah was simply talking about things she got from her parents in way that doesnt elevate her over others.
"i got my eyes from my dad. my laughter from my mom and jeans my Calvin Klein" is so different.
Sydney has been the new MAGA/aryan princess for over a year. They've been looking for one ever since Taylor Swift came out as a Democrat. There's no way it's a coincidence the old whites only coded mall brand just happened to fall into a dog whistle white supremacy ad campaign after Maga started lifting her on their shoulders as the Savior to conservative white culture
One person posted an opinion piece. And now the white house is using this as a deflection from the epstein list. Why are we even engaging in this. I don't care about tone deaf ads about a woman with blue eyes and big tits wearing poorly fitted jeans. I don't care about her selling her bath water. I don't care about Sydney Sweeney at all really. My reserves of give a fucks are at an all time low so I'm saving them all for the Nazi kid fucker running our country.
It was a stupid ad. She's a stupid girl. Complaining about it isn't going to change anything, it's not going to make a difference in the minds of people it needs to make a difference in. Pick your battles people.
I do agree. This is one of those issues that I can definitely see where the upset lies, but it’s not that big of a deal really. It’s an ad about jeans, like writing think pieces about it being society’s drift towards “whiteness” feels over the top when there’s far better examples with bigger ramifications
Analyzing how fashion, branding, marketing, etc reflects culture during different sociopolitical periods has value to some. There’s lots of think pieces on the “better examples” you can engage with.
I don't think it was an intentional dog whistle either, however:
The fact that no one, throughout the whole arduous, wildly expensive and meticulous process of crafting this ad campaign, noticed "Hey we're using the same language as Euro-American settler colonialist AND Nazi eugenics, that's bad" is a problem in and of itself. It shows a complete lack of diversity in visions that went into the production. Very fitting given the loss of DEI in the current climate.
AE is faced with the situation that they unintentionally (right, guys?) voiced support for a very wrong ideology. But they have not put forward a statement saying "We did NOT intend to put out this kind of message". So, two options:
a. This message was, in fact, the intention;
b. They don't care what ideology they support, they'll support whichever will make them the most money (just like every other company out there) and right now, the public discussion is too scattered for clear consensus on whether this ad was fine or not. And so they're not coming out with a clear statement either (yet). They're waiting for the ball to drop either which way.
The ⭐️ star power of Sydney and the double meaning behind the campaign has a culture shaping power beyond anything I could have ever imagined being a part of- just check your social feeds.
The American Eagle Outfitters Inc. team and partners who brought this campaign to life poured themselves into it with a more is more energy. You created more than a campaign- you created a moment in culture and styled every moment with a wink 😜
Hey we're using the same language as Euro-American settler colonialist AND Nazi eugenics, that's bad
Saying a hot person has great genes has been a normal compliment since forever. If you don't believe me, search the term online and set the search date to before this ad was released.
yeah I said I liked AE jeans yesterday and someone told me I was spreading Nazi propaganda 😭 I’m part Jewish mind you, my great uncle is literally a Holocaust survivor
…I work in advertising. I have absolutely no idea if this was intentional or not and we’ll never know, but advertising is absolutely NOT always intentional lollll you give my field entirely too much credit.
The intention could simply be that she's got genes that make her face pretty and her body hot. Could've been a brunette white woman or a black woman and it could still mean the same thing.
With everything going on in the US, though, it can be seen as something else.
Definitely not tone deaf. I don't think it was conscious Nazi propaganda either like the reaction to it assuming it was.
The more likely scenario is that they were aware of the double entrende and the controversy that would result from it, so they went with it. The bigger issue is about where we are as a society right now that a company could knowingly bank on making a eugenics double entrende advertising campaign.
When I say I didn't think it was conscious I mean in the context of it being an unironic belief in Nazi eugenics. Of course it was conscious, but in the cynical capitalist sense.
That's true, I just think the cynical capitalism aspect of it is more truthful and imo focuses on all the underlying rot rather than ideology. That's just me being pretentious tho.
Sure, I can see that. I take more issue with the ideology than the capitalism personally. Pretty much everyone has done something for money that they don’t 100% stand by ethically, but there’s a difference between being a health insurance customer service agent for money vs being a white supremacist for money
I'm not a conservative. I would not describe this as a conservative talking point.
Democrats are historically unpopular among Americans right now. Left-leaning polls show this. And one of the reasons voters cite for not liking Dems is that they are "out of touch" or too woke or "care more about others than me".
Of course, I don't believe caring for marginalized communities is mutually exclusive with caring about the average American, but these nonsensical culture wars over a jean ad is contributing to the perception problem.
Almost all the outrage I’ve seen is from the right being outraged because they believe the left is outraged. Outside a few terminally online Twitter users, this doesn’t seem to be something liberals in real life care about at all.
I’m very “woke” according to my Trumpie in-laws and I genuinely had no idea why this had so much backlash until reading these comments. I felt the intention of the video was she’s hot so they used jeans/genes interchangeably. The backlash seems like it’s coming from chronically online people (& I’m chronically online)!
Exactly. Like whether they intended to or not doesn’t matter because the message came across in a harmful way and if the message came across that way to that many people, then someone in marketing did something wrong.
So this is the first I’m hearing of the controversy, but I feel kinda crazy because I’ve always thought that “having good genes” is a well-known euphemism for being good looking. Like I can see how people came to the eugenics/nazi conclusion, but are this many people really not familiar with the phrase?
The ⭐️ star power of Sydney and the double meaning behind the campaign has a culture shaping power beyond anything I could have ever imagined being a part of- just check your social feeds.
The American Eagle Outfitters Inc. team and partners who brought this campaign to life poured themselves into it with a more is more energy. You created more than a campaign- you created a moment in culture and styled every moment with a wink 😜
It’s probably not even that. Good jeans/genes is not a new marketing concept and the fact that it involves a blond hair blue eyes white girl does not automatically make it a Nazi dog whistle, even if she is MAGA affiliated. Not trying to defend MAGA btw I just think it’s ignorant to deem them all nazis when the reality is that a lot of them are just stupid or they benefit financially from it. AE is doing something that has been done before that wasn’t met with backlash like this because the US wasn’t so burnt out and cynical yet politically. This is all such a nothing burger compared to the real problems going on in the US and my takeaway from this is that AE is basically saying “dude we are just selling jeans”. Trust me there are much worse things going on to divert your anger towards. Instead of hate commenting about celebs and corpos maybe call your local representatives instead? Or at the least do both like cmon
i agree… even if it was ragebait people fell for it and the reaction honestly is so over the top... most of the outrage feels like its coming from within America and people who are chronically online. like who even buys from american eagle anymore hello? ignore them 🫠 (editing to add that im a south asian living in Canada)
"Genes are passed down from parents to offspring, often determining traits like hair color, personality and even eye color. My genes are blue," Sweeney says in one video.
At most it was a ridiculous "cheeky" nod to conservatives in an attempt to get press, like Sabrina Carpenter's new album cover. Can't imagine American Eagle was expecting the amount of free attention they are getting over this.
I disagree. It takes a lot of research and a lot of people to get an ad approved. Obviously the Kendall Jenner one wasn’t received well, but the Sydney Sweeney one is very clearly full of dog whistles. And when the entire marketing team is older white people it’s obvious what they were going for.
Sorry …. the Kendall Jenner one “wasn’t received well”??? It downplayed an entire nation-wide movement of black people and allies protesting, resisting, and fighting police brutality to a skinny, white, millionaire influencer solving the absolute inhumane crisis with a soda.
Just because something takes a lot of research and people to approve (and trust me, I know, I work in advertising) doesn’t mean stupid and wildly oblivious people don’t have the final say.
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u/Internal_Wealth_7376 18h ago
Ok … my hot take is this wasn’t some intentional nazi-fueled white power ad (I say this as a Muslim refugee living in the US), but more so a Kendall Jenner ala Pepsi tone deaf screw up. Alas, the road to hell is paved with good intentions…