How did a jeans commercial with Sydney Sweeney come to this?
Sydney Sweeney is inexplicably reclining and also buttoning up her jeans. She’s wearing a jacket with nothing underneath. She’s attempting to sell some denim to women, and appears to be writhing while doing so. In a breathy voice, the actor recites the following ad copy as the camera pans up her body: “Genes are passed down from parents to offspring, often determining traits like hair color, personality, and even eye color.” When the camera lands on her eyes, which are blue, she says, “My jeans are blue.” The commercial is for American Eagle. The whole thing is a lot.
The jeans/genes play is a garden-variety dad pun. But when uttered by Sweeney—a blond, blue-eyed actor whose buxomness and comfort in her own skin seems to drive everyone just a little bit insane—it becomes something else. Sweeney does not speak much about her politics (for interested parties, there are potential clues, such as a 2020 tweet supporting Black Lives Matter and a mention of having conservative relatives), but this hasn’t stopped the right wing from framing her as one of their own. Her mere appearance in a plunging neckline on Saturday Night Live led the right-wing blogger Richard Hanania to declare that “wokeness is dead.” Meanwhile, speaking about the American Eagle ad in a TikTok post that’s been liked more than 200,000 times, one influencer said, “It’s literally giving Nazi propaganda.”
