Sydney Sweeney’s Ad Shows an Unbridled Cultural Shift Toward Whiteness

This week, American Eagle, which brought us baby tees and low-rise denim in the aughts, debuted an advertisement campaign starring actor Sydney Sweeney. Sweeney, 27, is featured doing all sorts of Americana things in her American Eagle denim — like leaning over the hood of a white Mustang or lying on the floor holding a long-haired German shepherd puppy. At the end of each video, an off-screen voice speaks over blocky letters declaring that Sweeney — blonde, blue-eyed and white — “has great jeans.” The wordplay was made even more explicit when American Eagle posted a video of Sweeney standing in front of a poster bearing her likeness with the word “genes” crossed out and replaced with “jeans.”

The backlash has been swift and fierce, and some of it, at least, if you ask me, is fair. The internet has been quick to condemn the advertisement as noninclusive at best and as overtly promoting “white supremacy” and “Nazi propaganda” at worst. These critics point to the copy and the implication of calling a white person superior because of their genes. In the videos, Sweeney exudes a sort of vintage sexiness that caters to the male gaze. She embodies the near mythological girl-next-door beautiful but low-maintenance sexy femininity that dominated media in the 1990s and the early 2000s. Together, the campaign feels regressive and not retro, offensive and not cheeky.

The advertisement, the choice of Sweeney as the sole face in it and the internet’s reaction reflect an unbridled cultural shift toward whiteness, conservatism and capitalist exploitation. Sweeney is both a symptom and a participant.

{snip}

{snip} Ads are always mirrors of society, and sometimes what they reflect is ugly and startling. Popular American culture is, indisputably, becoming more puritanical and more conservative.

It isn’t just that far-right ideology is proliferating on the fringe; our entire cultural ethos has moved further right, allowing for this sort of content. Young women are being radicalized through so-called clean skin care and healthy eating, internet slang once used exclusively by women-hating incels is mainstream, and people are unabashedly self-identifying as fascist on public platforms.

An advertisement that so many are condemning as a “eugenics dog whistle” fits into this movement. 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.