By Charles C. W. Cooke
Tuesday, July 29, 2025
Have you heard about the controversy that is “swirling”
around American Eagle and Sydney Sweeney at present? Yes, that American
Eagle and that Sydney Sweeney; the clothing outlet and the actress. Oh,
you must. You see, the two of them recently teamed up for a marketing campaign,
and, together, they made an ad in which Sweeney wore jeans and showed off her
figure and drove a vintage car and did other Sydney Sweeney–esque things in
front of the cameras. Unfortunately, though, everything “went wrong.” No sooner had the spot debuted than it had
been deemed “provocative” and “offensive” and found guilty of “sparking
debate.” And not about just any old thing, either. No, sir. The question that
was presented by Sweeney’s new American Eagle commercial was whether or not the
Nazis were Good.
You read that right. The National Conversation that has
been bolted to this transient exhibition of denim has been about . . .
eugenics, as conceived within the Third Reich. Swiftly after the ad was
released, a handful of people on the internet began complaining that American
Eagle had released a white supremacist commercial, and, as is often done, the
self-licking ice cream cone was swung immediately into action: Some people were
talking about it online, which meant that the press was able write about it as
if it were a real story, which meant that the opinion outlets were able to get
involved with a clear conscience, which meant that the press was able to write
about it some more, which meant that other people were guaranteed to talk about
it online, and, before too long, we had one of those perplexing news cycles
that start with a single, mind-numbing complaint from the most ridiculous
people in the country and end with daily updates on whether any of the figures
who are passively involved in the circus have yet “responded to the
allegations.”
Which, in this case, are that, during the course of one
of the commercials, Sweeney says,
Genes are passed down from parents
to offspring, often determining traits like hair color, personality, and even
eye color. My jeans are blue.
QED, fascists!
Per Amber Raiken, of The Independent, “the phrases ‘good genes’
and ‘great genes’ have historically been used in the language of eugenicists,
who believe the human race can be improved genetically by selective breeding.”
Which, yes, is true, but which is also as self-evidently irrelevant to this
matter as the fact that, by an amazing coincidence, Sydney Sweeney’s initials
happen to be “SS.” The core point here — the sole purpose of the
not-especially-good genes/jeans pun, and of the campaign more broadly — is that
Sydney Sweeney is attractive. That’s it. That’s the game. That’s the solitary
message that American Eagle is attempting to convey. If there is anything
subliminal going on, it is that, like every other company in the world that
hires a popular celebrity, American Eagle wants consumers to think that, if
they, too, buy the product that their featured star is wearing, they will
become just like her. Beyond that, however, there is nothing of consequence to
interrogate. Pretty girl. Blue jeans. That’s all, folks. Had American Eagle wanted,
its commercial could just as easily have said, “Sydney Sweeney looks extremely
hot in our clothes” — although, if it had, the same people who objected to this
one would no doubt have become convinced that, if they squinted a little, they
could detect the shadow of a disquisition on global climate change.
Why is this annoying? Partly because it’s dumb — and
because we need less stupidity rather than more. Partly because, once again,
the media have indulged the silliest people in America — rather than ignored
them, as they deserve. And partly — mostly, really — because this incident
illustrates the preposterous double standard that our would-be arbiters of
taste routinely apply to quotidian uses of the English language. When the
phrase at hand is, say, “From the river to the sea” or “Globalize the intifada”
or “Defund the police,” we are treated to exquisite journeys into nuance and
context, alongside detailed dissections of how words are translated from one
language to another. In those cases, we are assured that nobody who says any of
those things actually means them — even when their utterance is attached
to a clear declaration of intent. But when American Eagle makes an
advertisement for denim, all hell breaks loose. A pretty blonde girl says she
has good jeans — in a commercial for jeans — and the presumptions
instantly invert.
Which is ridiculous, isn’t it? For my sins, I have now
subjected myself to a bunch of essays and conversations that promulgate the
idea that American Eagle has put out a Nazi denim advertisement, and none of
them have come close to answering the only question that matters here, which
is, “Why?” Why would American Eagle do anything of the sort? Why would
Sydney Sweeney consent to help? And who, upon watching the spot, would react to
it by reaching for their copy of Mein Kampf? To believe that there is
anything nefarious about the “Sydney Sweeney has good jeans” line, one has to
forget everything one knows about sex, fashion, and marketing, to conclude that
Sydney Sweeney is sedulously attempting to commit career suicide, and to
imagine that, when this idea was merely embryonic, American Eagle’s beleaguered
owners came back from lunch one sunny afternoon, sat happily around their
corporate meeting table, and wondered aloud whether their favorite ad agency
might just happen to have anything a bit Himmleresque lurking in its summer
collection.
Or, to put it another way: one has to be a total bloody
moron.
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