Sydney Sweeney’s Jeans Ad

My platform has always been about bringing light to social injustices, racial inequalities, racism in all its ugly forms and anything else that is considered out of the ordinary and reeks of one thing or another. I’ve written articles on the shooting deaths of Black men by law enforcement to the plight of the Rohingyas and everything in between. Sometimes the atrocities are blatant and at other times, they are subtle and are aimed at disguising what is not evident at first glance.

The Sydney Sweeney jeans ad is about a pretty girl in a pair of jeans. Nothing spectacular and nothing else stands out unless you’re into jeans and what’s new out there. That’s just at first glance.

Take a closer look and something else emerges. The clothing company, American Eagle, faced its share of backlash when it was accused of promoting “eugenics,” by using wordplay on jeans/genes in the ad.

“Sydney Sweeney has good genes,” referencing Sweeney’s white, blonde and blue-eyed looks. Some have accused the brand of promoting, “eugenics,” and “Nazi propaganda.”

Eugenics is defined as a doctrine “adopted by the Nazis to justify their treatment of Jews, disabled people, and other minority groups.” It is a study on “how to arrange reproduction within a human population to increase the occurrence of heritable characteristics,” those deemed as sought after traits or of the blond and blue-eyed variety.

In the campaign, Sweeney posing in jeans is seen whispering:

“Genes are passed down from parents to offspring, often determining traits like hair color, personality and even eye color. My jeans are blue.”

The video has since been removed from American Eagle’s social media channels but the backlash continues. The ad comes in the wake of President Trump’s White House policies aimed at slashing diversity efforts in the federal government and the targeting of immigrants. Some say, the ad is reminiscent of the Calvin Klein campaign which starred a 15-year-old Brooke Shields posing provocatively and therefore, just “an overt sexualization of a minor,” and nothing more. The problem to this theory is that Sydney Sweeney is no longer a minor.

The company has issued a statement saying, “the campaign is and always was about the jeans. We’ll continue to celebrate how everyone wears their AE jeans with confidence, their way. Great jeans look good on everyone.”

Agreed. However, trying to promote a message beyond that of “just about the jeans,” and using wordplay to get the message across is something else altogether. In the current atmosphere of, “let’s do away with all that is different,” this ad is more than alarming. My take on this is, they should have known better!

Daily writing prompt

Scour the news for an entirely uninteresting story. Consider how it connects to your life. Write about that.

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