Let’s face it, some of you clicked this link because it had a photograph of American Actress Sydney Sweeney, and not because you’re aware of the latest controversy around her. For you people then, a refresher:
“Euphoria” star Sydney Sweeney, known for her curvy figure and blonde locks, popped out as the face of American Eagle’s newest campaign this week and some viewers are sounding the alarm, calling the ad blitz a dog whistle for eugenics.
It wasn’t so much the denim itself that offended, as it was the language Sweeney (and no doubt the marketing minds at AE) were using to hawk it.
The basic gist is as follows: American Eagle Jeans did an advert with Ms Sweeney for their product, in which the actress is described as having “great jeans” which has been taken by critics as a wordplay on “good genes”. The ad was replete with a slightly lingering shot of Ms Sweeney’s backside, and another slightly lingering one on her cleavage, which the ad-makers appear to believe the male gaze will find appealing. Here’s the ad in question:
Now you might think many things about that ad, dear reader, but it probably did not strike you immediately as racist. But then, you probably have not been reading the American media: If you look at the quote above from USA Today (owned by the New York Times) you will note that “some viewers are sounding the alarm, calling the ad blitz a dog whistle for eugenics”.
The basic idea here would appear to be that Ms Sweeney, as an attractive Caucasian woman, is being presented as having “good genes”, and that therefore people with genetic makeups that do not result in a physique or skin colour like hers must be deficient in some way.
As to how crazy it’s gotten? Well apart from Sweeney being accused of being a “Nazi”, here is what GQ had to say. Emphasis mine:
“But maybe the real lightning rod isn’t Sweeney, but what she’s wearing. Jeans have been saturated with political and cultural meaning for about a century. Wind back to before the Second World War and they were firmly workwear: rivet-reinforced trousers for physical jobs, first manufactured in the late 19th-century by San Francisco businessman Levi Strauss (yes, that Levi’s). This blue-collar association meant that jeans became a potent symbol of rebellion when rigid social norms started eroding after the war.”
Forgive me for perhaps underthinking this topic, but it seems to me that if there’s one thing older than “jeans being saturated with political and cultural meaning”, it is the notion of advertisers putting a sexually attractive woman in an advertisement to sell their product.
Or it was, until recently.
Consumers of television ads will have noticed what some have called a “woke trend” in advertising over the last decade, particularly when it comes to female-coded products. Thus ads for things like tampons and other sanitary wear will feature a range of women of varying body sizes, ages, and skin colours. The trend has been towards “visibility” – ie the notion that there is no such thing as a perfect body and those of us who do not possess perfectly toned abdominal muscles should also get a chance to be represented in advertising.
Somewhere along the line, it was decided that it was actually offensive to focus advertising around beautiful people because of the alleged harm that one person’s beauty does to another person’s image of themselves. When you think about it, this is a little bizarre, since it implies that the job of advertising is to make us feel better about ourselves by presenting us with people who do not threaten us. So, what does that say about the plus-size models who have been laden with work over the last decade? That we like seeing them on television because they make us feel better about ourselves?
Ultimately, the purpose of advertising is to sell products. Definitionally then, the advert must make us feel lesser for not owning the product. It must convince us that the product will improve us in some way, whether that be in terms of comfort, self-esteem, or functionality.
In the case of clothing, the market has always been in self-esteem. The idea that clothing will make us more attractive and make us look better. That is why there is a lingering shot in the new ad of Ms Sweeney’s bottom: Because to quote Father Ted, we all want lovely bottoms.
As for the row? It is I think mainly a raging against the general retreat of wokeness in the sense that wokeness exists to compel everyone around us to treat our own insecurities as their problem. So companies selling jeans were not expected to sell jeans in a way that made women feel as if they were competing with Sydney Sweeney, because that made those women feel unattractive and insecure. They were supposed to pick “ordinary women” instead, not to sell more jeans but to make fewer people have to reflect on their own bodily imperfections.
Since they made the ad, shares in American Eagle jeans have soared by 10%, which suggests that those who put their money on the line believe that most people react more positively to the traditional “this will make you hotter” advertising strategy for clothing.
Anyway, I will just have to keep plugging away at my writing, dear reader, until the day wrangler or levi come by, offering me lots of money to make an ad showing off my own amazing angles in their product. In the meantime, the reaction to this ad demonstrates, I think, why the backlash against wokeness has been such a long time in coming, and why it is increasingly powerful.