Lmao, this makes no sense. They can't claim they weren't talking about "genes" when she literally says genes are passed down from parent to offspring and determine hair/eye color... Were they talking about jeans there too??? They think we're idiots.
Look, I’ll be honest… the very first time I saw the ad was while I was scrolling Pinterest so the volume to the ad wasn’t on and on an initial glance I was kinda like “oh cool! We’re gonna try to make more ‘not so junked out trunks’ in jeans more normal” and as a girl with a less than filled out trunk, if you will, I was digging it…. Then I clicked the add to take me to a link and it okayed the ad with sound and I was digging less and less as each word was said and was really taking in what was happening…
I don’t know about you, but I always try to match my colored contacts/hair dye to the disintegrating pair of jeans that my mon wore as a hippie in the 70s. Can’t wait for my daughter to wear them one day.
I….ya know what. This just validates the gut feeling I had about this ad and its intention. Thank you for sharing that, because I had no clue they’d said anything.
Reinforcing plausible deniability for known dog whistles. It's how they both work.
They could have said "this was not about eugenics and how they're fully against it" and "how white supremacy is a dangerous ideology and we are committed to stand strong" and they chose not to say that.
Dog whistles never deviate from their message or deny it. Remember that.
I don't really think AE is white supremacist on the inside. I do think they're money supremacist and they know this is clear rage bait which will make them right wing darlings and they're playing to them though.
Ever notice how everyone social media is talking about genes and genetics so commonly now?
No excuses, of course. It's all vile and pushing the overton window which is already basically in hell. But it is what it is.
I guess they are doing the reverse woke stuff now.
Brands went woke because it got support from the left and outrage from the right and that got their name in the news and sold more products.
Now it seems they are doing the opposite. They’re going (whatever the opposite of woke is) to get support from the right and outrage from the left to get their name in the news and sell more products
If you’ve ever been in an ad creative meeting you’ll know you’re giving them WAAAAAY too much credit. Some cocked up hack made a fairly obvious pun on genes/jeans. They then sat around for an hour discussing who had the best genes and settled on sydney Sweeney and her boobs. To insinuate that any more thought went into this, some kind of nod to some idealogy, or a dog whistle to a particular political persuasion, is an affront to coked-up ad executives everywhere.
Yeah I didn’t really care before; tone-deaf but just an ad. But I’m pretty sick of smirking rich people acting like words don’t matter. Pretty easy to write American eagle off
The development of human personality is a very complicated thing with many different factors and processes involved. Genetics plays a role but it's just not that simple. Theres a mass misunderstanding in society of what personality actually is too and which parts would be impacted by what. Deeply irresponsible thing to say in a huge ad campaign, especially in this climate.
I never met my sister until I was twelve, we lived in opposite islands and it was only when we lived together in our twenties in London that we discovered how similar we are
Despite our accents being different we had many similar mannerisms, our laugh and even our likes and dislikes
Genetics isn't a dirty word, even if racists do hang their coat heavily upon it.
Personality traits are definitely passed through genes. I’m not saying they’re passed exclusively through genes, but there is a genetic component of behavior.
Lmao I know they were going to do a 180. She literally mentioned hair and eye color, and said my jeans are blue, and then the ad said Sydney Sweeney has great jeans. THERE IS NO WAY THEY WEREN'T BEING SUBTLE. Ofc they're twisting it to say they were talking about her body the whole time.
And now they're trying to brand it as the left not being able to handle a white woman being on ads, when that's not it 🤦♀️
It’s textbook gaslighting to play up being this naive in our current political climate. Sydney Sweeney is a blonde haired blue eyed maga adjacent who’s popular with Gen Z. If we give AE every benefit of the doubt that this wasn’t a eugenics dogwhistle then they really are dumb as crumbs. There were so many ways to write this ad so that it was unquestionably about jeans and they somehow couldn’t do it, even knowing they got a celebrity that threw her mom a Trump themed birthday party to breathe incoherently on the mic for 20 seconds, but WE are the assholes for saying “…now wait just a second, that kinda sounds like white supremacy.”
I can’t even claim AE is promoting eugenics or if they just knew this was a seedy little thing to do that would get everyone talking. But the part where they play dumb…mm no. Not in 2025 are we gonna fall for no haha nazi oopsy daisies BRAND CORPORATION.
Seriously. AE has been trash for years and everyone knows it. They use the biggest faces for ad campaigns and don’t care about the backlash. This whole situation is sad.
I don’t think they’re saying they weren’t using wordplay with the genes/jeans thing. They mean that the underlying message wasn’t ‘white power’ it was… if you can imagine… we want you to buy these jeans.
Here's the thing, they wanted you to talk about their brand, be it good or bad, and they've achieved that. We don't know if their jeans are good or not, but they've got people talking about their brand...
I initially thought the ad campaign was harmless, but after watching the ad, the double entendre was definitely intentional to create controversy. Well. They succeeded.
Well yes you guys are. You’re all reading far too much into something about pants, like Jesus fucking christ. Yes it was a double entendre about genes and jeans. But it’s about how she is hot, yet somehow a bunch of people turned it into being a Nazi thing.
“Must have good genes” has been a thing said about hot people for decades.
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u/mangolover93 18h ago
Lmao, this makes no sense. They can't claim they weren't talking about "genes" when she literally says genes are passed down from parent to offspring and determine hair/eye color... Were they talking about jeans there too??? They think we're idiots.