I’m not sure if this is entirely uninteresting or just eyeroll-inducing, but there is a Boy Who Cried Wolf karma going on here and that possibly adds to my complete apathy.
The sweet, adorable, talented Sydney Sweeney was in an American Eagle ad very recently, and the loudest echochamber in the US lost its collective mind. I laughed when I saw the commercial. AE wordplays with jeans and genes, and states Sydney Sweeney has great genes jeans, and her jeans are blue. She speaks of how genes are passed down to children and affect a person’s attributes. All facts, which the dissenters take issue with facts to begin with.
The TikTok crowd is ready to fight, which isn’t surprising, and yelling Nazi this and Hitler that, which is totally insulting and trivializing an actual atrocity known as the Holocaust. When a white-that-week, blonde-haired Beyonce dropped her Levi’s ad, it was heralded as empowering and boss and feminist. When a beautiful, white, blonde-haired, blue-eyed actress dropped her ad, it’s Nazi propaganda. Seriously.
Because, you see, one can’t have great genes (dropping the jeans pretense) if they are white. Asians can have great genes, blacks can have great genes, Hispanics can have great genes, Italians can have great genes, and on. In the US, white people are supposed to slink around and self-flagellate for at least the next hundred years. You can’t say it’s okay to be white, because it isn’t, according to the racists and white apologists. I am certainly connected to this ad because I am an Irish American/Native American who sees the constant anti-white racism and extreme anti-right/right-of-center online every day. It’s everywhere and completely acceptable. It’s unchecked mental illness, it’s encouraged, and it’s scary.
To say one has great genes is not saying others do not by default. Nowhere is it stated better genes/jeans. Period. It’s not an either/or like so many want people to believe. My cousins have great genes. My gorgeous husband has great genes in the eyes and jawline department. My genes kind of suck, but I can appreciate other people’s great genes without causing an uproar and trying to destroy someone’s life. (As of this writing, Ms. Sweeney is being harassed publicly and dox’d, with her voter registration made more public than it was as public record in her state of residence.)
Nobody mentions that the super-cute “Sydney Sweeney jean’s” entire profits are going to a domestic abuse program, as did her ad salary. They just wish career destruction and death on her because she is out there doing her job and making a living.
Cari R Esta 