Why So Many got the Ick from that American Eagle Ad
American Eagle “Good Genes"/Jeans” Ad
Seeing the revival of the Culture War in the year of our Lord 2025 is strange, a reverberation of a decade past which refuses to die. We have seen it happen in fits-and-starts, spectral reminders of a time in which the world was so freely flowing away while we argued over whether it was cool to sexualize every woman in video games – including and not limited to those of a questionable age demographic. There is no denying that misogyny is back in a big way with the triumphant return of Trump Administration 2.0.
A most potent and telling moment in this regard is found in the Sidney Sweeney “Good Genes” ad for American Eagle which launched recently and has overturned the hives of culture warriors like so many termites. Sadly, a mythologized “USA” brand which proudly produces its products overseas has chosen to wade into the tinderbox tensions of national politics to scrape a few of your bucks in a stuttering economy.
What’s the problem?
On its face, the coded reference to the “genes” of a blue-eyed, busty, and hugely successful blonde giving you a feeling of discomfort is understandable. As an ostensibly socially liberal nation, one which only recently tamped the licking flames of racial discord of the last century, any discussion of “White” as “good genes” is going to reasonably start to provide some misgivings.
One cannot ignore that the Civil Rights Movements of our country have all been brutal, violent struggles. We have died in the tens of thousands and tens of times more have been imprisoned, tortured, and ruined in our quest for a nation which doesn’t operate on issues of race. It is in our blood to reject these ideas and ideals. From the descendants of chattel slavery to those locked in perpetual indentured servitude, those flushed across the country by induced poverty, systemic and corporate violence, and outsourced opportunity, the strictures of racial caste are culturally repugnant.
As such, you cannot be blamed for getting a prickle on the back of your neck, if your eyes sharpened a bit and you were suddenly uncomfortably aware of your immediate surroundings when you saw this ad. That was the point.
Dipshits in Advertising
The Overton Window (the overlapping tolerances for certain topics/sentiments in mainstream discourse) has shifted undeniably over the last decade. The cultural ramifications of Liberal identity politics following the Great Recession continue to be felt some fifteen years later; the “It’s Her Turn” methods of Democrats and the resounding pushback of the radicalizing Right now having pushed us into an era where “Roman” salutes have become normalized on the Timeline.
We have proud, self-proclaimed “Nazis” on mainstream internet channels, fundraisers for the same when there is inevitable pushback in larger society. We have rolled back protections universally – both in speech and law – for the most fragile in our communities through passivity and an unwillingness to stand for ourselves.
Any proficient advertising specialist should be able to read the room, take a temperature reading of the trends and issues at hand for the day, and act accordingly. Any GOOD advertiser should know when prodding the political hive is a solid strategy for growth or a very expensive trip to PR-amelioration. In other words, the Overton Window shifting rightward in recent decades has changed advertisers opportunities and audience perceptions in radically different ways.
Today, an ad which should have been a South Park bit is being used for viral marketing on the back of racial agitation. What could have been a referential joke twenty years ago is now something which hits a little too close to home.
Slimy Media
Today, we don’t live in a time where jokes about our racial past are quite as easy as they once were. No matter what our individual or family heritage and experience, if you use humor to cope and process, it has taken on a darker tone as of late. The advertising and media which surrounds us plays no small part in reflecting that reality back at us.
The advertisers are either out-of-touch or completely aware of what current cultural trends are across our nation. White supremacy – a concept taught as dead at the turn-of-the century – has returned to the mainstream in force, and media and advertisers are taking notice. American Eagle is testing the waters for its peers under the cover of “edginess,” seeing just how far the Window has now shifted.
This is the underlying issue with the ad. It isn’t that it uses White-identity politics and racial history to sell jeans, but that there might be a defined target group for that advertisement. We know that the core audience of White supremacy in the US is empowered unlike ever before in our lifetimes, feel that this isn’t just edge-lording no matter what the intent.
Natural Outcomes
Look, if you’re feeling the Ick right now, there is nothing wrong with that. Things are going horribly awry in our country and the systems which we all learned as fundamental are being actively eroded from beneath us. Your aversion to the ad isn’t something unnatural. It comes from your ancestors, those in family, labor, and spirit who have been tested time-and-time again by the same extractive powers and ideologies.
You are not the hysterical party, the ones cancelling beer brands for seeing a human being. And although the disempowered identity-centric advertising of the last Liberal-era (and rejection thereof) is partially to blame for where we are now, understand the reactions are different. There is something real in the Sweeney ad, a political opportunism that stretches beyond simply selling tuck-swimsuits or appropriately skin-toned bandages. We live in a time where the ideas expressed in the “Good Genes” ad – satirical or not – have real-world power.
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