Why American Eagle’s Ad Isn’t Just Tone-Deaf—It’s a Denim-Wrapped Disaster of National Delusion
American Eagle wants you to believe in great jeans.
Unfortunately, they tried to sell them by flirting—no, grinding aggressively—with the idea that maybe you want great genes too. You know, like a little eugenics cosplay with your back-to-school discount.
Enter the July 2025 campaign: Sydney Sweeney in slow-motion. Lush lighting. A voiceover purring about what gets “passed down.” And a cheeky little cross-out of “Great Genes” morphing into “Great Jeans.” Subtle as a MAGA hat at a pride parade.
Cue collective whiplash.
🧬 Eugenics, But Make It Fashion
Look, it doesn’t take a PhD in critical theory to side-eye this mess. “Great genes” isn’t just a clunky pun—it’s a Molotov cocktail of aesthetic supremacy thrown into a gasoline-soaked discourse around race, beauty, and power. When you market “greatness” by spotlighting a thin, white, conventionally hot blonde in a campaign about what’s inherited, you’re not being clever.
You’re being historically illiterate in high-def.
👖 The Denim is Distressed, So Is Our Collective Soul
We’ve been here before. Calvin Klein. Abercrombie. The entire ‘90s catalog of “hot but fascist-adjacent.” But this? This isn’t a throwback. This is regressive with the self-awareness of a goldfish on ketamine.
We’ve had decades of conversations about representation, trauma, intersectionality, and body politics. And here comes American Eagle, stomping into that space like Godzilla in low-rise bootcuts, yelling, “But what if Aryan chic is back?!”
🏛️ The Pants Are Political
Oh—and then Trump called the ad “fantastic,” as if we needed more confirmation that this was less “fashion campaign” and more “white nostalgia with a marketing budget.”
American Eagle’s official response? A shrug in Helvetica:
“It was always about the jeans.”
Sure it was. And “heritage” is just Southern for “we don’t talk about what Grandpa did.”
Meanwhile, their stock price soared—because nothing juices the market like performative controversy wrapped in white cotton stretch denim.
🇺🇸 This Is What America Actually Looks Like
Here’s the thing: when artists, critics, and TikTokers lit this thing up like a Fourth of July firework made of feminist rage, they weren’t saying “heritage is bad.”
They were saying this isn’t heritage—it’s historical fanfiction in low-rise drag.
America isn’t “great genes” passed down like a family recipe for blondness. It’s messy. Loud. Queer. Neurodivergent. Multiracial. Working class. Disabled. Fat. Gorgeous. Ugly. Angry. Joyful. In transition. In therapy. In contradiction.
It’s a patchwork denim jacket that smells like incense and Red Bull. And that’s the point.
🪡 Final Stitch
So next time you want to wax poetic about what makes this country “great,” maybe skip the eugenics-adjacent wordplay and start with a sewing machine.
Because in the real story of America, every thread matters.
Even the weird ones. Especially the weird ones.
