American Ambiguity

As someone whose positions generally place on what is considered the political left, I did not, as USA Today columnist Ingrid Jacques suggested, “lose my mind” when I found out about American Eagle’s ad campaign featuring Sydney Sweeney. I hadn’t even heard about it until I read Jacques’ column about it, and I didn’t follow up reading the column by burning, mutilating, refusing to wear, or doing anything else to my American Eagle jeans, which I do own and some of which I just purchased earlier this summer. That said, American Eagle’s campaign warrants critique.

On the one hand, the advertisement is clearly built around the play on words between “gene” and “jean,” and it’s quite possibly not intended as a more serious statement about someone’s genetics. Additionally, while the advertisement discusses genes, it does not directly state that Sydney Sweeney has good “genes”; rather, it states that she has good “jeans,” which of course, is meant to offer a value statement about the brand being represented. American Eagle jeans, the advertisement clearly intends us to think, are “good” jeans.” 

On the other hand, it would be disingenuous to argue that the advertisement is not implying that Sydney Sweeney has good “genes” as well. The play on words, framed by discussion of genes, doesn’t work without the implication.

The idea that Sydney Sweeney has “good genes” in that she is objectively physically attractive is a cultural one. This is not to say that she is or that she isn’t physically attractive. It is to say that such a statement either way is culturally bound. There is no universal truth outside of particular time-and-place-bound human perspectives that Sydney Sweeney is physical attractive (or that she is not, for that matter). Meanwhile, as a white woman of particular body dimensions, Sweeney fits historical notions of feminine beauty that have been not only dominant but explicitly built and promoted within practices of racism that have accompanied European and European-based United States cultures. As such, with its implication that Sydney Sweeney has good genes, the American Eagle advertisement hails a history of racist ideas about beauty.

Yet, the advertisement is (I would guess deliberately) ambiguous in doing so. The implication that Sydney Sweeney has good genes is not necessarily an implication that other people do not have good genes. For instance, if I tell someone they did good work or they look nice, that doesn’t necessarily mean that I think other folks didn’t do good work or don’t look nice. American Eagle’s response to criticism of its advertisement relies on this ambiguity, stating how their jeans are for “everyone,” as if to cement the idea that implying Sweeney’s good genes doesn’t mean they are implying other people do not have good genes.

As I consider all of this, I don’t think American Eagle is Nazi propaganda or attempting to evoke eugenic violence. That said, if American Eagle executives uttered the kinds of judgmental statements Abercrombie and Fitch executive Mike Jeffries once did, I would reconsider my assessment of what they are trying to do. Still, even if American Eagle does not intentionally invoke white supremacy, a good deal of racism throughout U.S. history has been perpetuated through ambiguity, and the Sydney Sweeney advertisement occurs within the context of that history.

In the column I referenced at the beginning of this post, Ingrid Jacques connects criticism of the American Eagle to what she claims to be the problems of diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. As part of her discussion, she writes, “Whether progressives want to admit it, the country is still majority White and these Americans are tired of being made to feel evil or unworthy simply because of their immutable characteristics. No one should be made to feel that way.” The reference to a white “majority” in the United States suggests a judgment of their opinion mattering more than other folks’ opinions, which draws on the same kinds of problematic histories as the American Eagle advertisement. Beyond that, the very sentiment Jacques’ statement offers when she states that no one should be made to feel evil or unworthy simply because of their immutable characteristics is exactly at the heart of diversity, equity, and inclusion work. No one should be made to feel the way Jacques describes, and that’s exactly why the American Eagle advertisement warrants criticism. The advertisement corresponds with U.S. cultural notions that white people have good genes and folks who are not white do not, and thus that based on immutable characteristics, folks who are not white are not as worthy as white people. Ambiguity not only does not change that; it reinforces it.