No, Sydney Sweeney's ‘great jeans' ad isn't a Nazi dog whistle
If you've logged on to Twitter, TikTok or any other social media platform, you've seen chatter swirling around American Eagle's jeans advertisement with the 'Euphoria' star. And a lot of it is fueling the outrage machine.
The American Eagle ad showcases the actress wearing a denim jacket and jeans with the tagline 'Sydney Sweeney has great jeans.' What should've been an ad campaign for jeans has American Eagle being accused of giving off 'Nazi' vibes.
The ad is a pun — a play on words (jeans/genes) to sell jeans. Yet according to internet critics, it has been labeled an endorsement of eugenics — the discredited bigoted theory that the human population can be perfected by selective breeding. One X user posted 'the American Eagles ad wasn't just a commercial. It was a love letter to white nationalism and eugenic fantasies, and Sydney Sweeney knew it.'
Such hyperbolic reactions are why American Eagle is being accused of promoting racial purity in its ad — highlighting Sweeney's blue eyes and blonde hair is seen by some as a nod to white nationalism. That's not cultural critique — that's ideological fan fiction.
The viral nature of this controversy shows how quickly outrage can spread. Over 220,000 Tiktok videos have been tagged with #SydneySweeney and one user commented that Sweeney's ad was 'one of the loudest and most obvious racialized dog whistles we've seen and heard in a while. When those traits are consistently uplifted as genetic excellence, we know where this leads. This just echoes pseudoscientific language of racial superiority.'
Critics are upset because, in the ad, 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.'
The outrage is misplaced. The ad is a pun. Not a dog whistle.
I recognize the importance of calling out white supremacy propaganda, but this is not it. Seeing a denim ad as a secret endorsement for Nazism minimizes real threats and distracts from actual problems.
This is not Mein Kampf in marketing form.
For context, this isn't the first time denim has sparked controversy. In the 1980s, Calvin Klein ran a jeans ad featuring Brooke Shields. At the time, Shields was a 15-year-old model and the tagline she recited was, 'You want to know what comes between me and my Calvins? Nothing.'
Shields' ad was met with backlash by critics for being too sexually suggestive, resulting in the commercial being banned in some countries and on local American affiliates of ABC, NBC and CBS.
But here's the difference: the backlash over Shields' ad was rooted in serious concerns about the oversexualization of a teenager. Today's moral panic over Sweeney is about virtue signaling.
There's a human cost to attacks by the digital mob. During an Instagram Live, Sweeney was seen crying over the backlash she's received on social media. 'I think it's really important for people to see how words actually affect people,' she said.
She's right. The social media machine exists on a diet of anger and hate over perceived slights that exist in the minds of critics determined to find offense where none exists.
This manufactured crisis becomes even more absurd when you consider serious problems demanding our attention. With real crises affecting millions around the world — from war to starvation to actual threats to democratic institutions — the upset over a perceived subtext in an ad for denim peddled by a blonde-haired blue-eyed actress seems a bit misplaced.
Sweeney isn't promoting hate. She's selling jeans. The outrage says far more about the critics than the campaign. Not everything is a dog whistle — and sometimes, a jean ad is just a jean ad — and recognizing that fact shouldn't be controversial.
Mary Anna Mancuso is a member of the Miami Herald Editorial Board. Her email: mmancuso@miamiherald.com
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