The heroine is thin, white, with long blonde hair. The camera pans over her jeans before resting on her blue-eyed gaze. "My jeans are blue," says Sydney Sweeney (Euphoria, The White Lotus), after speaking about the transmission of genes from parents to their offspring. The voice-over then concludes, "Sydney Sweeney has great jeans," deliberately playing on the homophony between "jeans" and "genes." Unveiled on July 23, the ad promoting American Eagle jeans did not go unnoticed in the United States. By early August, major newspapers, from the New York Times to the Washington Post, were publishing opinion pieces and analyses about it, while CNN, ABC and Fox News debated it on their morning shows.
Although it was showcasing a generally uncontroversial item of clothing, the ad polarized public opinion. Progressives saw it as a eugenic-tinged endorsement and a display of supremacist propaganda. Conservatives, meanwhile, embraced it as a return to idealized femininity and "common sense." "It's cultural revenge for years of being told to find dumpy lingerie models inspiring," wrote The Free Press, the up-and-coming "anti-woke" media outlet. Donald Trump and his vice president, JD Vance, even defended the campaign themselves, delighted to point out along the way that the actress had registered as a Republican voter in Monroe County, Florida, in June 2024.
The American Eagle campaign, which sent the brand's stock price soaring in the wake of the scandal, embodied the reactionary tide sweeping through fashion in recent months, in contrast to the inclusive and philanthropic rhetoric that dominated the past decade. "We've entered the post-politically correct era," said Kimberly Jenkins, consultant and founder of the platform The Fashion and Race Database. As if fashion and progressive ideas no longer necessarily went hand in hand. Visually, this translated into the return of certain retro codes, conjuring the tradwife aesthetic, celebrating the straightforward return of the housewife, in a house dress, with a small handbag and a string of pearls.
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