You’d think nothing could possibly be controversial about Sydney Sweeney — one of Hollywood’s most popular young actresses — modeling jeans for American Eagle. You’d be wrong.
This week, social media lit up with outrage from the professional grievance crowd over American Eagle’s new ad campaign featuring Sweeney. The offense? The ad used the pun “good jeans,” and because Sweeney is white, blonde, and has blue eyes, left-wing commentators are calling it a “Nazi dog whistle.” No, that’s not satire. That’s the actual argument.
ohhhh haha like GENES!! i get it! she has good jeans like she has good GENES! hahahaha like in a nazi way!! totally!!!!! https://t.co/kFsRGL1ilv
— (((Ella Yurman))) (@EllaYurman) July 26, 2025
And as ridiculous as that sounds, it didn’t stay confined to a couple of unhinged tweets. The Washington Post — yes, the same paper that fancies itself as the sober, serious guardian of democracy — ran a full-blown piece amplifying the claim. Other outlets followed, pushing the narrative that American Eagle is somehow dabbling in white supremacist eugenics with a play on words in a denim ad. This is what our media ecosystem has become: professional journalists laundering the worst online hot takes into “respectable” discourse.
Mega-viral TikTok videos with millions of views are, in near-unison, accusing American Eagle and Sydney Sweeney of “Nazi shit,” “fascist propaganda,” and “literal Eugenics.”
… over a jeans commercial that made a pun about “genes” and “jeans.”
I’ll break it down on today’s… pic.twitter.com/Qdv3RiISi4
— Brad Polumbo ⚽️ (@brad_polumbo) July 28, 2025
It’s hard to overstate how out-of-touch this looks to normal people. Do Democrats like losing elections? Because this is how you lose them. They’ve turned cultural paranoia into a full-time job, managing to find “fascism” in everything from jeans ads to 4th of July parades. And then they can’t understand why regular Americans — who just want to buy clothes without being lectured about Hitler — are tuning them out.
Of course, the pun is intentional. “Good jeans” is a play on words. Sydney Sweeney is a conventionally attractive actress. That’s it. That’s the whole story. The idea that using her image in an ad is some coded Nazi message is so laughable it would be comical — if it weren’t coming from people with platforms and influence.
American Eagle’s provocative new denim campaign featuring actress Sydney Sweeney leans into retro sexiness — and it’s sparking debate about eugenics and “wokeness.”
Our style reporters discuss the ad campaign and why it’s broken the internet: https://t.co/3CCxKyEqou
— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) July 28, 2025
But here’s the larger point: even after the cultural backlash to DEI and “woke” excesses (and yes, Donald Trump’s reelection has only accelerated that backlash), the media and institutional left are still stuck in the same paranoid loop. They see racism and fascism everywhere because their worldview requires it. And the moment they’re back in power, you can bet they’ll push even harder.
