Generally speaking, subliminal messages are supposed to be, you know, subliminal. But for their new Sydney Sweeney ad, American Eagle traded in the dog whistle for a megaphone and subtext for bolded captions. “Genes are passed down from parents to offspring, often determining traits like hair color, personality and even eye color,” she tells the camera. “My jeans are blue.” At best, it’s a shitty dad joke. At worst, it’s a scantily coded rallying cry for white supremacy. More likely, but no less disturbing, it’s a cynical corporate ploy to capitalize on the people who genuinely think it isn’t cool to have blonde hair and big tits anymore (spoiler alert: it is). Taking a cue from the Jumpman himself, American Eagle, a brand that has leaned into progressive policies in the past and says they are donating 100% of proceeds to the Crisis Text Hotline, decided racists buy jeans too, and they’re using white fragility as their sales pitch. In the process, they’re reincarnating the centuries old idea that whiteness needs to be vigilantly guarded — even if it’s never been more protected.
Bare-boned, but precise, and symbolic in the most obvious way imaginable, the ad plays out like a lazy pep talk for people tired of purple-haired teens calling them problematic. It’s for gorgeous (re: just white) men and women forced to accept an unbearable agony: everything isn’t always about them. It’s defiance in the face of a world that no longer understands pristine, beautiful whiteness. In an alternate universe, there’s an AE commercial where 2Pac winks before lighting up a blunt and telling the camera, “I’m a thug til I die.” In this one, we’re just left with a new tagline for millennials who think things have gotten just a little too gay for their comfort. It’s a premise that draws from a fear of otherness; if Donald Trump’s "Kamala is for they/them” ad was for you, so is American Eagle. According to the Democratic super PAC Future Forward, Trump’s apparent anti-trans ad earned him a 2.7 percent advantage over Kamala Harris in the presidential campaign. Thus far, American Eagle’s ad has been — let’s just say it looks like the ad worked.
According to Adweek, American Eagle’s stock rose 24% this past Monday. That number represents its biggest jump in 25 years. While there could be other factors, it’s hard to ignore the before and after. Unsurprisingly, Donald Trump himself is a fan of the ad, too. In a recent tweet, the president gave props to Sweeney’s new commercial. "Sydney Sweeney, a registered Republican, has the HOTTEST ad out there. Go get 'em Sydney!" Trump’s endorsement is troubling enough. Just as troublingly, though, is that the fandom might be mutual. While Sydney has rarely spoken outwardly about politics, BuzzFeed did confirm that she registered as a republican in Florida four months before the 2024 Presidential Election. If she voted for Trump, she was already more than a MAGA-coded mascot; she became an active reinforcement for a system that’s dismantled various minority support systems since Trump’s re-election.
Last week, Trump issued a memo calling for federal loan recipients to ban Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programs. One study found an 80 percent reduction in such projects. This past January, Trump issued an executive order to limit Critical Race Theory being taught in K-12 schools; lest these beautiful children be burdened with knowledge of a past that isn’t as perfect as their white skin. Narratively, it’s Trump continuing to exploit the same not-so-latent “otherphobia” that defined his original campaign slogan. Like a less clever, but seemingly no less effective Ozymandias (re: Watchmen), Trump successfully convinced much of the world that they had a common enemy worth putting their differences aside; except instead of an otherworldly being, it’s Black people. Trans people. Fat people. “Anyone that’s not white” people. And so, extremely unironically, the White House is protecting whiteness. I guess, so is Sydney Sweeney. But it’s never needed to be protected.
According to a 2019 report from Nature.com, white people — or people of European ancestry — only make up 16% of the global population. But despite the rest of the world comprising 84% of the global total of human beings — there are nearly five-times more people of color than there are white people — 54% of models featured in major fashion campaigns are white. A 2016 report from The Guardian found that 78% of models featured in that spring’s fashion advertisements were white. It’s not an exact comparison, and there are different modes of measurement and data sets to consider. But it’s hard to see those numbers and conclude that society has come a long way. But to Trump supporters and, perhaps the ad execs at American Eagle, “progress” is often synonymous with “threat.” It’s a threat Sydney Sweeney’s “good jeans” are meant to defend against. Or maybe they’re all just pretending to. Or maybe their team full of veteran ad execs and market testers somehow missed the cultural overlap that seems to so clearly overlap with visceral, nostalgic American racism. Maybe they didn’t take into account that, whether she wants to be or not, Sydney Sweeney is the Cooper Flagg of conventional American beauty. Maybe they just want to make a shit ton of money and such an overlap is inevitable when you use someone like Sydney anyway. Maybe they’ve decided a little eugenics speak is worth it if it means if they can donate to noble causes like Crisis Text Line. Maybe, like Pepsi or Snapchat execs before them, they’re just stupid. Anyways, they’re making a lot of money off of it.
Maybe Sweeney is just trying to make a quick buck. She’ll have to endure some snarky thinkpieces like this one, but season three of Euphoria — a series largely about a drug-addicted black woman’s romance with a trans girl — is coming out next year. She should be just as good as her jeans. Trump’s re-election, and the sales surge of ads like American Eagle’s latest is proof that there are still people who believe America needs to be made great again. With the success of Sweeney’s new ad, you have to wonder whether American Eagle will just lean all the way in next time. Admittedly, MAJA has a nice ring to it.