Sydney Sweeney in one of several ads for jeans by
American Eagle Outfitters Inc. (Fall 2025)
I.
There are some news stories that, profoundly stupid and wearisome as they are, simply refuse to go away and everyone seems eager to share an opinion on.
Usually, these are the kind of stories that I resist reading and avoid writing about.
However, in this instance, I'll make an exception to the rule, as the case of Sydney Sweeney and her campaign for jeans manufactured by American Eagle exposes something interesting about contemporary culture (it also affords me the opportunity to place a picture of Miss Sweeney at the top of this post).
II.
Let's begin with the first charge against the ad; one made by old-school feminists who say it has a retro-reactionary feel to it, openly inviting the (heterosexual) male gaze which, for fifty years now [1], has been conceived as a bad thing in that it sexually objectifies women and leads to their oppression.
I'm not sure I entirely agree with this analysis, but it's an interesting theory; one that builds upon Sartre's concept of le regard in his essay on phenomenological ontology L'Être et le néant (1943).
The problem with such a theory - positing as it does the male gaze primarily as a social construct designed to uphold certain ideologies - is that it overlooks (or downplays) the biological underpinning; i.e., the fact that men have evolved to enjoy looking at women and to find certain physical traits more desirable than others when it comes to mate selection.
Thus, when looking at Miss Sweeney's cleavage, for example, this might be because of some biological imperative rather than an attempt to reinforce the patriarchy (or to render her a passive object in order to overcome my castration anxiety) [2].
And besides, we know now that women have eyes too and enjoy looking at bodies just as much as men (including other female bodies if that way inclined).
So, let's not spend any further time discussing the American Eagle campaign in relation to this idea of the male gaze and move on to the far more surprising claim that the ads - by word-playing on the homophones genes and jeans - are secretly advancing eugenics and white supremacy and not just making a slightly cheesy joke.
III.
Unbelievable as it is to many commentators, American Eagle is facing a backlash over the 'Sydney Sweeney Has Great Jeans' campaign for the reasons set out above: that a lazy pun is coded racism and that what we're really meant to admire are not her faded blue jeans but her sparkling blue eyes and pale skin (i.e., her genetic inheritance and/or racial identity).
Now, admittedly, one of the ads does feature Sweeney saying: "Genes are passed down from parents to offspring, often determining traits like hair color, personality, and even eye color. My jeans are blue." [3]
And that short - and overly simplistic - lesson in genetics doesn't help matters, but, even so ... I really don't think that American Eagle are dog whistling and whilst I wouldn't describe the campaign as bold and playful, neither is it Nazi propaganda reflective of Trump's America.
Notes
[1] The concept of the male gaze was first articulated by feminist film theorist Laura Mulvey in her essay 'Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema', in Screen, Vol. 16, Issue 3, (OUP, Autumn 1975): pp. 6-18.
Well, I say that, she arguably borrowed the idea from the art critic John Berger who discussed the treatment of the female nude in European painting in his 1972 book (and BBC2 TV series) Ways of Seeing. Berger asserts that men are traditionally accorded the active role of viewer, whilst women are passive and decorative objects of desire that afford pleasure to the male spectator.
Thus, for Berger and Mulvey both - as well as a whole generation of critical theorists - the act of looking has been inextricably linked to power and politics.
[2] This is not to say men should perv on female bodies in a lewd and lecherous manner. And when it comes to sneaking a peek at a nice pair of breasts it's wrong to ogle. In fact, there's an etiquette involved as Jerry points out to George in an episode of Seinfeld: 'Looking at cleavage is like looking at the sun; you don't stare at it, it's too risky! You get a sense of it, then you look away.'
I have discussed this episode on TTA in a post dated 19 March 2015: click here.
[3] The social media ad from which I quote and which sparked all the hoo-ha, seems to have been removed by American Eagle from its official YouTube channel. However, it can still be found on YouTube having been uploaded by Alien Ads 801: click here.
