The Sydney Sweeney American Eagle jean ad—surely you’ve seen it by now. “My jeans are blue,” she says, slipping effortlessly and seductively into a pair of blue jeans. Simple enough, right? Apparently not. The left erupted in outrage—because, apparently, using a double entendre that plays on “genes” and “jeans” in a jeans commercial is being read as some kind of sinister code for Nazism.
One TikTok user declared, “Those Sydney Sweeney ads are weird. Like fascist weird. Like Nazi propaganda, weird.” Another tearfully lamented, “people just won’t believe us until [black people] are hung out there,” later begging “the good whites” to send deposits to her Cash App.
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At its core, the ad is nothing more than a typical marketing tactic: a good-looking actress used for sex appeal. And it worked—American Eagle’s stock jumped 18 percent. But outrage over the commercial has not been confined to fringe keyboard warriors—it’s coming even from college and university professors, who say that American Eagle’s decision to cast Sweeney—a white, blonde-haired, blue-eyed actress—to sell jeans is a dog whistle for white supremacy.
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Northwestern anthropology professor Shalini Shankar, for example, accused American Eagle of “aligning themselves with a white nationalist, MAGA-friendly identity.” And University of Michigan marketing professor Marcus Collins told ABC News, “You can either say this was ignorance, or laziness, or intentional … none of those are good.”
The fuss over the ad boils down to its cheeky double entendre: “Sydney Sweeney has great jeans.” Of course, it’s classic advertising 101—cast a conventionally beautiful actress to lure shoppers (mostly young women) into buying American Eagle’s blue denim, promising, in effect, that slipping into these jeans might just up your attractiveness game. It’s the same clever marketing that had millions scrambling for Air Jordans, convinced that wearing them would somehow turn them into slam-dunk legends. But because Sydney Sweeney is white, the left insists the ad secretly signals eugenics.
Robin Landa of Kean University told Newsweek the pun is “not just tone-deaf—it’s historically loaded.” To ABC, she claimed the ad “activates a troubling historical association,” noting how the American eugenics movement once weaponized the idea of “good genes” to justify white supremacy. Meanwhile, Columbia lecturer Sayantani DasGupta turned to TikTok, fuming that the ad “is both a testament to this political moment, and it’s contributing to and reinforcing this kind of anti-immigrant, anti-people of color, pro-eugenic political moment.”
But these claims not only wildly misrepresent the ad’s intent—they ring hollow coming from professors aligned with a political movement that frequently platforms or praises Planned Parenthood, a central actor in the very eugenics history they purport to denounce.
In her commentary on the ad, former DailyWire host Brett Cooper reacted to the wordplay, saying, “This is not an example of eugenics—it is a joke.” She continued by telling the left to “stop saying you suddenly care about eugenics when we have the most glaring example of this that is still so pervasive and prevalent in our society, that we as taxpayers have been funding for years—this practice of abortion, Planned Parenthood.”
The professors’ accusations of Nazi-inspired eugenics are not only contradictory but also factually incorrect. Eugenics broadly means “the use of selective breeding to improve the human race.” According to the Holocaust Encyclopedia, eugenicists aimed to identify “hereditary” traits contributing to societal ills, develop biological “solutions,” and push public health measures to enforce their agenda. The Sydney Sweeney ad makes no reference to any of this. As an article in UnHerd put it, “Saying Sydney Sweeney has good genes because she’s conventionally attractive is not saying she’s part of the master race. It’s like meeting a tall and athletic person and saying ‘you must’ve had good genes to become that.’”
Add to that, this latest episode of left-wing outrage—coming from professors, no less—is yet another blow to the left’s much-touted mantra of “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI). DEI has often proven to be selective, frequently excluding white people. Seriously, would this conversation even be happening if Beyoncé starred in the American Eagle ad boasting about her “good genes”? The left did not object to the Black is Beautiful movement, which celebrated natural hairstyles like the Afro and embraced the diverse skin tones, hair textures, and physical traits within the African American community. More than that, the uproar over a simple ad featuring a white American actress only highlights the left’s growing boredom, victim mentality, and lack of purpose.
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Leona Salinas recently reported that left-leaning college students suffer disproportionately from mental health struggles: “Very liberal college students are significantly more likely to report loneliness and emotional strain than their conservative peers. One study found that 52 percent of very liberal students said they felt lonely and isolated, compared to just 37 percent of conservatives.”
Even more troubling, then, is how many college professors are willing to lend their credentials to this outcry. Rather than seeing it as a simple lesson in advertising, too many use the moment to push the narrative that America is a racist country. The Sweeney ad controversy exposes just how many professors are running low on balance, reason, and perhaps even common sense.
But this should come as no surprise. Hiring practices at many universities have long been skewed to favor radical professors. UC Berkeley, for example, recently faced criticism for retaining a professor who openly praised the violence of October 7th.
If today’s professors can look at a tongue-in-cheek denim ad and see Nazi propaganda, it’s a sign that our cultural gatekeepers are actively eroding the line between genuine bigotry and imagined offense. The danger isn’t in a jeans commercial; it’s in the kind of intellectual fragility that finds white supremacy in every corner but excuses overt racial pride when it fits their own narrative. Professors who live out this hypocrisy are rotting higher education from the inside out—and leaving the country dumber and angrier.
Image: “Ana de Armas and Sydney Sweeney at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival 05” by Jay Dixit on Wikimedia Commons
“If today’s professors can look at a tongue-in-cheek denim ad and see Nazi propaganda, it’s a sign that our cultural gatekeepers are actively eroding the line between genuine bigotry and imagined offense.”
Today’s professors? I’ve talked with professors a lot the past week or two. Sydney Sweeney hasn’t come up in any conversations. I doubt that most of them haven’t heard to Sydney Sweeney. Most are probably worrying about Trump wrecking their research programs.
How many leftwing professors have tried to whip up controversy about Sydney Sweeney and white supremacy? Two? five? Out of how many professors? A couple million?
It sounds to me actually like rightwing publicists are the ones trying to drum up a neo-Nazi controversy. Where none really exists. Or maybe someone wants to say a few fringe types from both left and right have tried to whip up some controversy.