No, loony Left, Sydney Sweeney isn't promoting white supremacy

Telegraph

2 days ago

Before this week, had you ever heard of a clothing brand called American Eagle? I hadn't. But I certainly have now. And it's all thanks to a mob of Left-wing dingbats who seem to have convinced themselves that its jeans are racist.
A few days ago, American Eagle launched an advert starring the young actress Sydney Sweeney (best-known for The White Lotus, Euphoria and her not-exactly-reticent attitude towards exhibiting her physique). The ad shows her modelling the firm's wares, alongside the tagline, 'Sydney Sweeney has great jeans.' And, as one, the world's most shriekingly hysterical Leftists decided to interpret this as an endorsement of far-Right eugenics. Because, well… 'jeans' sounds like 'genes', doesn't it? And Sydney Sweeney's blonde and blue-eyed, isn't she? You know – like the Nazis, right?
Naturally, America's top liberal media outlets were straight on the case. 'Sydney Sweeney's new campaign draws fire for racial undertones', thundered Salon. 'Sydney Sweeney fronts ad campaign for jeans – sparks debate about eugenics', fretted Newsweek. The Washington Post, meanwhile, ran an 'analysis' headlined: 'How American Eagle's Sydney Sweeney 'good jeans' ad went wrong.' (Did it? What if American Eagle is only trying to sell jeans to people who are sane, rather than howlingly deranged?)
Of course, you might assume that the people denouncing the ad on these ludicrous grounds are all Gen Z TikTok users with blue hair and nose rings. But I'm afraid not. Because, in a quest to decide whether the ad is indeed 'Nazi propaganda', the TV channel ABC News spoke to an actual university professor – who declared, in all apparent seriousness, that the ad's tagline 'activates troubling historical associations for [the US]'. Specifically, 'the American eugenics movement, [which] in its prime, between 1900 and 1940, weaponised the idea of 'good genes' to justify white supremacism'.
"The blond haired blue eyed actress talks about genes as in DNA being passed down..."
"Nazi propaganda with racial undertones..."
This is Good Morning America. This is ABC News. pic.twitter.com/dmvZjQy0B3
— MAZE (@mazemoore) July 29, 2025
Well, I suppose that's one way of looking at it. But perhaps I could venture to put forward an alternative. Which is that the ad is not, in fact, part of a neo-Nazi plot to help usher in the Fourth Reich, but is instead intended to sell denim trousers. Hence the use of a famous young actress to show how good the denim trousers look. As for the pun on her having 'great genes', I suspect it refers to the actress's celebrated physical attractiveness rather than her suitability to lead the master race in a conquest of Europe.
Still, whatever the motives of American Eagle's bosses, this imbecilic uproar has earned their products more publicity than they could ever have dreamed of. It's the inverse of 'go woke, go broke'. Offend the Trots, earn lots.