Fascism or just a Jeans ad: Sydney Sweeney vs. Katseye

Recently there was an ad done by the american eagle, where sydney sweeney was featured in, buttoning up her jeans. And the voice over done by sydney sweeney was going along the lines of “ genes are passed down from parents to offspring, from generation to generation, my jeans are blue. “ , after which a male voice over says “ sydney sweeney, has great jeans “.

Now to a person who may not understand the context, it may seem a harmless. But to someone with a little more media literacy, we can tell this is alluding to eugenics. What is eugenics you may be asking?, well, back during the world war 2, nazi germany used to portray a “ pure bloodline ” ideology. What that means is that, according to Adolf Hitler, the “ Aryan Race ” was the superior and strongest race. People who are from the aryan race, have blonde hair, pale skin, and blue eyes, which is also the euro-centric beauty standard. And seeing as sydney sweeney, is a pale, blonde haired and blue eyed woman, she fits under the description of what “ great genes ” consist of. I understand the jeans-genes homophone being a good hook for the campaign, but there should’ve been some cultural and political sensitivity consultation for this. As this campaign could genuinely be seen as a dogwhistle, some people were arguing along the lines of “ oh this is not meant to be taken in that context ”, but doesn’t it seem a bit interesting, that no person of colour was in that campaign, only a white woman, who by the standards of what’s supposed to be great genes, fits the description. American eagle did come on social media, deflecting the backlash by saying “ that wasn’t our intended message, it wasn’t meant to be taken in that context ”. But, sydney sweeney has said nothing on it, well until a few weeks later, in an interview with GQ, she said “ the ads and projects i do, speak for themselves ”, and by that statement, it does seem that she was in support of what the message was. During this whole debacle, she was outed as a registered republican, after which donald trump came to twitter and said that it was “ the hottest ad he’s ever seen “, the GQ interviewer asked how sydney sweeney felt when she found out, donald trump had seen and said something about her ad, she said that “ it was surreal ”. People did not like sydney’s reaction to everything going on, but during this time, Gap, which is a another clothing company. They had come out with a campaign with katseye.

Katseye is a Global girl group, consisting of a diverse group of woman. Sophia Laforteza : Filipino, Megan Mei-Yok Skiendeil ( more famously known as Megan Skiendeil ) : Half-Chinese, Meret Manon Sarpong Bannerman ( more famously known as Manon Bannerman ) : Half Ghanian, Daniela Andrea Avanzini Llorente ( more famously known as Daniela Avanzini ): Latina, Lara Raj: Indian and Sri-lankan Tamil, Yoonchae ( Jeong Yoon-chae ): Korean. None of the members of Katseye are pale skinned, blonde haired and or have Blue eyes. The campaign was just a video of them dancing to the song “ Milkshake ” by Kells, the choreography went viral, and the campaign inspired alot of fashion enthusiasts to replicate the outfits in the video.

Everyone agreed that the Gap campaign, was way better and inclusive than the American Eagle one.