If there’s one suggestion provoked by a hot blonde woman writhing around in jeans, it’s Adolf Hitler.
Actress Sydney Sweeney’s new ad campaign for American Eagle apparently constitutes “Nazi propaganda” in certain circles. Those offended are making it known in vocal fashion. (RELATED: American Eagle Outfitters Stock Soars After Ditching Wokeness For Sydney Sweeney)
ABC’s “Good Morning America” ran a segment on the advertisement, a host solemnly informing viewers, “The play on words is being compared to Nazi propaganda.” The segment features a professor who claims “the pun … activates troubling historical implications for this country.” The professor continues, referencing the campaign’s connections to “the American eugenics movement” and white supremacy.
American Eagle’s campaign sees Sweeney in a series of sultry positions, with the slogan, “Sydney Sweeney Has Great Jeans.” One video makes the pun explicit. It features Sweeney admiring a poster of herself, the campaign tagline printed beneath her likeness. “Genes” is crossed out for “jeans.”
Get it? Because “jeans” sound like “genes”? And American Eagle sells jeans? And Sweeney’s … agreeable proportions are probably determined by her genes?
All of this may sound fairly inoffensive. But Sweeney is blonde. To make matters worse, she’s blue-eyed, too.
That was enough for the MSNBC braintrust to get to work.
Totally sane and normal stuff at the top of the MSNBC home page.
Totally sane.
Totally normal. pic.twitter.com/A15YD3AMvI
— Western Lensman (@WesternLensman) July 29, 2025
“Sydney Sweeney’s ad shows an unbridled cultural shift toward whiteness,” reads the headline of an op-ed authored by Hannah Holland, an MSNBC producer. In Holland’s view, Sweeney is “both a symptom and participant” of this shift toward “whiteness, conservatism and capitalist exploitation.”
It’s difficult to parse what a “cultural shift towards whiteness” entails, exactly.
The United States remains a majority white country. A century ago it was almost 90% white, according to Census records. If “whiteness” is supposed to be, simply, “white American culture,” then it seems an appropriate invention of a country overwhelmingly populated by whites until recent decades. It’s unlikely MSNBC would air an opinion reeking of equal disdain towards any other race.
“Ads are always mirrors of society, and sometimes what they reflect is ugly and startling,” Holland continues. “Popular American culture is, indisputably, becoming more puritanical and more conservative.”
As everyone knows, Puritans were notorious sex kittens.
Holland’s characterization of American culture trending towards conservatism is a little less objectionable, if only because “conservative” has been stretched beyond all meaning.
Sweeney’s ad does harken back to a different America, because it’s a decent imitation of Calvin Klein’s 1980 ad campaign with 15-year-old Brooke Shields: “Do you know what comes between me and my Calvins? Nothing.”
The media when they see a beautiful woman in an ad pic.twitter.com/fhliN4bhNY
— Brittany Hugoboom (@BritHugoboom) July 29, 2025
One point for Holland. Conserving the sexual mores of 1980 is technically conservatism.
Holland calls “some” of the backlash “fair.” She notes critics are concerned by “the implication of calling a white person superior because of their genes.”
The ad campaign is “obviously damaging” and “depending on who you ask, even dangerous.”
“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.”
Holland’s thoughts find company with those of style reporters at The Washington Post, who also dissected the ad. (RELATED: ‘Good Morning America’ Has Most Ridiculous Response To Sydney Sweeney’s New Ad Campaign)
“The first thing I thought of when I heard the tagline … was the DHS Instagram account, which posted a subtly racist painting a few weeks ago and an explicitly racist painting last week,” offered reporter Shane O’Neill. “The latter depicted a gigantic blonde buxom woman chasing away Native people to make way for White settlers. When this is the imagery being promoted by our government, a pun about ‘genes’ hits differently.”
But we’re supposed to care when these people hit the unemployment line.
There is no debate. There was one way too online guy who loves Dorf or something that made one comment. https://t.co/yvMkI5y0sJ
— Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) July 28, 2025
There’s probably a decent ethical objection to mocking an individual who genuinely thinks this qualifies as insightful commentary. Then again, dispensing one’s lunacy in a major newspaper warrants some mockery.
Restating this “controversy” in plain terms should cement the total absurdity of the corresponding outrage.
A brand cast a white, blonde, blue-eyed, thin, busty woman in their ad. The ad praises her genome. It is generally accepted that a person’s genome informs the person’s looks. The woman is good-looking. Good-looking people move product.
One suspects that a sizable portion of the backlash to Sweeney’s campaign does not proceed from logic. Nor historical review. Both are reasonable means of disguising enormous jealousy and insecurity. But for lefties, speculation about female intrasexual competition is as verboten as speculation about genes.
In any case, we’re still talking about a woman wearing jeans. American Eagle’s marketing team deserves a standing ovation.
Follow Natalie Sandoval on X: @NatSandovalDC
