Sydney Sweeney Blue Jean Ad Sparks Controversy, but Eugenics in Fashion is nothing new.

[ihaveaquestion]

[NNadir]

1. Knr

[The Mouth]

35. It amazes me what people take offense over.

Dolts who can't tell the difference between a pun and eugenics.

[JI7]

2. Is it really a controversy ?

[Iris]

4. The video is long but you can get the main idea after a couple of minutes.

It's not a controversy as much as it is an example of how the kinds of conspiracy theories the right operates under, along with the dog whistling, shows up all around us.

[JI7]

5. I can't watch the video right now so just did a search

and read about it but it. Maybe there is more to it which there video goes into but it seems like the "genes" part is what is supposed to be controversial.

I haven't seen the ad itself but I would just think the "good genes" refers to ber being the stereotypical attractive female but not really about race. There are non white girls that have that same look so it just seems like that's what it's about.

[58Sunliner]

7. There is more than one ad, but let me know when poc do this exact ad.

[SocialDemocrat61]

8. Not just stereotypical attractive

but a blonde-haired, blue eyed, white woman saying she has "good genes". Sounds like something out of 1930s Germany.

[JI7]

10. It's said about non white people considered attractive also

And often about black and other non whites that tend to age "better" becsuse of darker skin. People say it's the genes.

[SocialDemocrat61]

13. Not the point

It's what the ad campaign by AE is saying. No one should be making excuses for them.

[EdmondDantes_]

15. That seems like looking for a reason to be offended

They have models who aren't white and it's a play on words. I'm also not sure that seemingly one random person on YouTube qualifies as "controversy".

[SocialDemocrat61]

16. More than just one person on YouTube

https://www.salon.com/2025/07/27/sydney-sweeneys-new-campaign-draws-fire-for-racial-undertones/
But I understand that white people sometimes have a hard time empathizing with the feelings of people of color.

[TheProle]

17. "Sounds like something out of 1930s Germany..."

or Buzzfeed
https://www.buzzfeed.com/lyapalater/children-of-famous-people-that-were-genetically-blessed

or imdb:
https://www.imdb.com/list/ls008627174/

or the Today show:

&ab_channel=SiriusXM

[SocialDemocrat61]

19. Still sounds like

1930s Germany.

[WarGamer]

28. Adriana Lima has good genes... and identifies as Afro-Brazilian.

Would you be upset if she did the same commercial?

[SocialDemocrat61]

30. Irrelevant

Adriana Lima didn’t do the ad. Instead the chose a blonde haired, blue eyed, white woman.

[WarGamer]

32. Simply because she's "trendy" right now...

People are reading waaaaayyyy too much into this.

[SocialDemocrat61]

34. Maybe

But it’s still shows a bit of cluelessness and insensitivity on their part. And people will read into things based on their personal experiences. If someone is offended by something, I’m not going to tell them that they are wrong just because I’m not offended. That’s just playing thought police.

[Celerity]

12. Another one of American Eagle's main spokespeople is Coco Gauff, so there is that

Coco x American Eagle: The Making Of

[SocialDemocrat61]

18. It's the messaging

They didn’t say Gauff had “good genes” like they did with the blonde haired, blue eyed, white woman.

[pcdb]

27. It's wordplay. genes jeans, get it?

We're becoming the puritans we once despised.

[SocialDemocrat61]

29. How is that being a puritan?

But yes it is wordplay. Bad wordplay.

[SickOfTheOnePct]

33. I finally watched it today

IMO, people are making a big deal out of nothing.

[Abolishinist]

24. Apparently for some, i.e. those who look for fault in everyone. Why, it's 1930's Germany all over again!

Angela, besides being an expert in permaculture, is also a self-proclaimed expert on the ethics of fashion and how it relates to fascism.

Parkrose Permaculture is a family-run farmette on 1/4 acre in Portland, OR. Angela has more than 25 yrs experience in permaculture and specializes in perennial food crops, unusual fruit, beekeeping, duck/chicken-keeping, domestic skills, and unschooling.

Aha! I knew it, the Portlandia connection! I wonder if they consulted with her on the Colin the Chicken episode. Hmmm. Why I bet Colin was raised on her farmette!

[SocialDemocrat61]

3. She threw a maga themed

Birthday party for her mom

[Celerity]

42. False. It was her mum's 60th birthday and the hats said 'Make Sixty Great Again'

https://www.instagram.com/p/Chklx0rPVTq/?img_index=3

[SocialDemocrat61]

44. Sounds maga themed

or at least inspired. The guy wearing the blue lives matter shirt didn't help.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.msnbc.com/msnbc/amp/ncna1298520

[Celerity]

45. everything is not some deep MAGA projection

This performative outrage from things like the OP video makes our Party play right into the caricatures exploited by the fucking RW scum, IMHO, and tragically opens us up to ridicule even by numpty assholes like JD 'Fuckstick' Vance.

Talk about a self-owned gift to the MAGAt crew



https://variety.com/2025/digital/news/jd-vance-sydney-sweeney-american-eagle-jeans-ads-democrats-nazi-1236476449/

Vice President JD Vance gleefully weighed in on the controversy over Sydney Sweeney’s ad for American Eagle jeans — encouraging liberals to keep the outrage coming. “My political advice to the Democrats is continue to tell everybody who thinks Sydney Sweeney is attractive is a Nazi,” Vance said jokingly on Friday’s episode of the conservative “Ruthless” podcast. “That appears to be their actual strategy.”

Vance, mining the political vein of the latest culture-war clash, continued, “I mean, it actually reveals something pretty interesting about the Dems, though, which is that you have, like, a normal all-American beautiful girl doing like a normal jeans ad, right? They’re trying to sell, you know, sell jeans to kids in America and they have managed to so unhinge themselves over this thing. And it’s like, you guys, did you learn nothing from the November 2024 election?”

“I actually thought that one of the lessons [Democrats] might take is we’re going to be less crazy. And the lesson they have apparently taken is we’re going to attack people as Nazis for thinking Sydney Sweeney is beautiful,” Vance told the hosts of “Ruthless,” who recently inked a licensing deal to join Fox News.

“Great strategy, guys. That’s how you’re going to win the midterm, especially young American men.” “So much of the Democrats is oriented around hostility to basic American life. So you have a pretty girl doing a jeans ad and they can’t help but freak out,” Vance said. “It reveals a lot more about them than it does us.”

snip


https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/variety-magazine/

[SocialDemocrat61]

46. I'm not going to play thought police

and tell people what they should and shouldn’t be offended by. Those who had issues with the ad have every right to have those issues and every right to voice them. I’m not going to censor them or tell them to self censor. There enough on the right who do that.
But to get back to the birthday party, it does seem to be a bit tone deaf. If they threw a party with everyone wearing German uniforms with red arm bands or white hoods, even if their intent was pure, it’s going to be perceived in a certain way, especially when in the public eye. For public figures often perception is greater than reality.

[Celerity]

47. I prefer to focus on truly dangerous people who are in actual positions of power to pursue horrific racist/christofash

policies that carry the force of law, not some spun up 'controversy' about some jeans advert using word-play puns and Hollywood starlets to sell denim. This constructed performative outrage/overreaction just further reinforces RW-pushed negative stereotypes about our party and unnecessarily opens us up to ridicule.

Things like this below are what I find to be far more impactful in a negative way for the nation and thus of far more import:

The Shadow Cabinet: Project 2025's Continued Conquest of American Power

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100220529443

[SocialDemocrat61]

48. And you have every right to focus

on the issues and matters that you care most about and want to focus on. And as I would never tell you that you’re wrong to focus on those matters, I’m not going to tell anyone else that they are wrong for being offended by something and voicing their opinion. Nor would I spend any energy defending a rich, entitled celebrity for their actions. I don’t care if it’s Beyoncé, George Clooney, Bill Maher or Kid Rock. They have plenty of employees who are paid to defend them.

[Prairie Gates]

9. Starting off with "I don't know who Sydney Sweeney is" was a bad rhetorical choice

It's just like when somebody massively famous is mentioned here and a bunch of posters chime in "Never heard of them" as if that's something to be proud of. Obviously, the more famous somebody is (i.e., Sidney Sweeney), the greater the self-own of what is actually a pretty petulant move, "I don't know who that is, harrumph!" I suppose this is fine enough for internet posters who stopped paying attention to culture in 1978, but being out of touch is not a selling point when you're doing cultural criticism.

Apart from that embarrassing faux pas, there's a lot good in the analysis. I just wish people would cut the shit whereby they think it's a point of pride to be ignorant.

[Celerity]

11. +100

It's just like when somebody massively famous is mentioned here and a bunch of posters chime in "Never heard of them" as if that's something to be proud of. Obviously, the more famous somebody is (i.e., Sidney Sweeney), the greater the self-own of what is actually a pretty petulant move, "I don't know who that is, harrumph!" I suppose this is fine enough for internet posters who stopped paying attention to culture in 1978, but being out of touch is not a selling point when you're doing cultural criticism.

thank you!!

[SocialDemocrat61]

14. It reminds me of those who proudly proclaim

that they don't own a TV. As if that is something that makes them superior.

If I don't know who someone is I google them, which is what everyone should do. However, so many here seem to only watch cable news and nothing else, it make sense that the world is passing them by.

[thought crime]

20. Use Google? Really?

No, I think for Myself ! Or if that doesn’t work, which is often the case, I use DuckDuckGo; sniff, sniff.

[womanofthehills]

49. Most don't proudly proclaim it

They don’t want to take time away from their phones to watch tv when much more interesting stuff is on our phones.

For me it was - why pay money for cable tv when I’m into my phone? If I watch tv besides internet time - I would have no time to do anything. I’ll brag - no tv for 12 or more years. Think of the thousands of dollars saved by not having cable.

[SocialDemocrat61]

50. Whatever works for you is great

TV, laptop, phone, tablet etc. And I never said most. I just stated that there are those who do. I once worked with a person who would go out of their way to announce it every day and sometimes with the very little relevance to the topic at hand. It became a running joke on the team. We even considered starting a pool for at what hour they would do it.

[fujiyamasan]

21. Good point about the pride of ignorance

And that goes for many things, including pop culture. If you’re going to critique some aspects of it you should have some idea of what you’re talking about. I’m not saying you need to sit through a Sydney Sweeney movie (that would be cruel), but have some idea of why she’s famous (and let’s be honest it’s mostly due to her being willing to do nude scenes and having large… you get the idea). She’s now on everything. She has a soap named after her (which markets itself as something she bathed in) and an ice cream flavor at Baskin Robins.

The AE ad campaign is weird. I mean the play on genes is one thing, but I think when you have a blonde haired blue eyed woman saying she has “good genes” people start to raise an eyebrow.

The “controversy” may well be contrived, because any ad exec would know how this could be interpreted.. but it still gets buzz and that gets people into the stores, which in itself is a challenge with inflation and tariffs. Anyone remember the ads by American apparel years ago? I mean the stuff was veering on soft porn.

All publicity is good publicity?

[SocialDemocrat61]

22. You're giving ad execs too much credit

They are pretty clueless 😉

[fujiyamasan]

23. That's probably true

Mostly overpaid, and I’d be ok with GenAi taking over some of those marketing jobs to be honest (uh oh, I’ll be stoned by some here for saying that).

But they know that two things get eyeballs: sex and controversy.

[Crunchy Frog]

26. I don't know what else she's done but she was in Season 2 of The Handmaid's Tale.

Was quite good.

If she's a MAGA that's disappointing.

[NNadir]

38. It all depends on what one regards as "culture." For many years when I was a kid in the lab, people would come in...

...report what was on the latest episode of some television show series, Seinfeld, LA Law, whatever, and I had no idea about what they were talking. In some of the conversations these people would be speaking as if the characters were real people.

In general, they were fairly good scientists, but I'd like to suggest that they could have been better scientists if the fully embraced the culture behind their work, science.

Last year, my son brought home his girlfriend, a nuclear engineer from an inland state where they are both graduate students, who had never been to New Jersey. We rented a place at a New Jersey Beach where - I didn't know this - the "reality(?) show" Jersey Shore was filmed, Seaside Heights. To try to understand "New Jersey culture" apparently she watched the show (with my son).

So my wife and I who had never seen the show, got a few episodes out of the library and watched them.

We were appalled. (We live near Princeton, where people like Albert Einstein, Robert Oppenheimer, John Von Neumann, Kurt Wiles, Alan Turing, Toni Morrison, on and on and on worked and lived.)

I'm not a cultural anthropologist. I do feel educated enough and well within my rights to take short peeks into other cultures and be happy to understand that while I may not know much about a culture, I'm comfortable saying I'm not willing to go deeper. There isn't time in one's life to not rely in many instances on snap judgements.

(I have no problem with people rejecting New Jersey from watching Jersey Shore. As the best State in the Nation, and a geographically small state, we're overcrowded. I will say that as a young man growing up on Long Island, my opinion of New Jersey was rather poor, but it turned out that I was, just in time, disabused of my ignorance.)

I don't know who Sydney Sweeney is, and frankly I don't care, but I do think there is a genetic reductionist intent for the double entendre and frankly, I find it offensive, but not so much that I'm willing to spend all that much time on it.

The planet is going fascist, and while the ad may be trivial, I do see it as racist, and as I am more than a little raw over the affair, I feel comfortable with my outrage. I really don't need to know more about Sydney Sweeney to feel it.

[LudwigPastorius]

25. We've come a long way as a society.

At least Sydney Sweeney isn't 15 years old! /s

[obamanut2012]

31. She's a Magat

So, she's probably stoked to do this

[DenaliDemocrat]

36. She does have great genes for what is considered

Conventionally attractive.

I mean, nice face, large breast, good skin, low body fat. All that is genetically determined.

I find the outrage kind of silly.

[Justice Brandeis]

39. This "controversy" is the height of stupidity

That some people with too much time on their hands can get so agitated is really baffling.

[EX500rider]

40. Seems to be working:

Sydney Sweeney headlines
American Eagle’s fall denim campaign. Sweeney’s latest sultry photo shoot has been credited with a 15% boost in the company’s stock.

[Celerity]

43. then there is this:

https://variety.com/2025/digital/news/jd-vance-sydney-sweeney-american-eagle-jeans-ads-democrats-nazi-1236476449/

Vice President JD Vance gleefully weighed in on the controversy over Sydney Sweeney’s ad for American Eagle jeans — encouraging liberals to keep the outrage coming. “My political advice to the Democrats is continue to tell everybody who thinks Sydney Sweeney is attractive is a Nazi,” Vance said jokingly on Friday’s episode of the conservative “Ruthless” podcast. “That appears to be their actual strategy.”

Vance, mining the political vein of the latest culture-war clash, continued, “I mean, it actually reveals something pretty interesting about the Dems, though, which is that you have, like, a normal all-American beautiful girl doing like a normal jeans ad, right? They’re trying to sell, you know, sell jeans to kids in America and they have managed to so unhinge themselves over this thing. And it’s like, you guys, did you learn nothing from the November 2024 election?”

“I actually thought that one of the lessons [Democrats] might take is we’re going to be less crazy. And the lesson they have apparently taken is we’re going to attack people as Nazis for thinking Sydney Sweeney is beautiful,” Vance told the hosts of “Ruthless,” who recently inked a licensing deal to join Fox News.

“Great strategy, guys. That’s how you’re going to win the midterm, especially young American men.” “So much of the Democrats is oriented around hostility to basic American life. So you have a pretty girl doing a jeans ad and they can’t help but freak out,” Vance said. “It reveals a lot more about them than it does us.”

snip


https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/variety-magazine/