No doubt, by now you have heard about the controversy over American Eagle’s new ad campaign, which features actress Sydney Sweeney. The theme of the campaign is Sydney Sweeney has great jeans.
The campaign includes several videos, which are perhaps a little sexy, but not at all tasteless. Some of the ads pun on “jeans” and “genes,” so that, at the conclusion of one of them, Sweeney says “My jeans [genes] are blue,” a reference to her eyes as well as the jeans she is wearing.
Sydney Sweeney x American Eagle, oh my god. pic.twitter.com/tDkeGT9R7G
— Sydney Sweeney Daily (@sweeneydailyx) July 24, 2025
All of this is quite innocent, by normal standards. But the Left has erupted in a chorus of condemnation, accusing Sweeney and American Eagle of engaging in “Nazi propaganda.” Seriously. Sweeney is white, blonde and blue-eyed, so to say that she has great jeans/genes is to endorse “Aryan” ideology from the 1930s. I found it hard to believe, but my friends who are on TikTok say this is no joke: the “Nazi” claim is all over that platform, and others as well.
Apart from the jeans/genes pun, there is a joke here that liberals deliberately fail to get. Sydney Sweeney’s genetic heritage is indeed notable, but not on account of her blue eyes. Sydney herself is in on the joke, which this tweet explains:
Idk who needs to hear this but the genes thing was about her big ol honkers https://t.co/G8GFTOSt4i
— brit (@pashedmotatos) July 28, 2025
Yes. But, apart from the fact that the Left has once again shown itself to be humorless, there is something going on here. A few years ago, American Eagle was a woke company. Its ads endorsed “body positivity,” meaning that some of its models were obese. Others were not conventionally attractive in other ways. By historical standards this was an odd way to sell clothing, but it was in keeping, apparently, with the zeitgeist of the time. But those days are gone. “Woke” is dead. Advertisers are getting back to normal.
And that, no doubt, is what the Left hates.
While liberals have been going crazy, normals have had fun at their expense. Thus, this meme:
If you are curious about what normal, attractive young women make of the American Eagle controversy, here is an excerpt from today’s American Experiment podcast:
Sydney is rumored to be a conservative. I have no idea whether that is true or not, but she clearly is normal. Which these days is more or less equivalent to conservative. But, politics aside, she is a symbol of something–I would say, of a return to normalcy. Which was, I think, Warren Harding’s campaign slogan in 1920. Harding wanted to return to normalcy after the disastrous, progressive administration of Woodrow Wilson. Harding won. He was a good president, and he did help to return the U.S. to normalcy, at least for a time. This is a digression, but I think Donald Trump is also leading the U.S. on a path back to normalcy.
But back to Ms. Sweeney. Apparently she is a good actress; her performance as a woman boxer in the upcoming film Christy is getting rave reviews. But as far as I am concerned, her performance in a recent Rolling Stones video is a career highlight that may never be surpassed:
So: Happy days are here again. Let the good times roll!
