First, jeans ads were controversial because they were too provocative. Then, they were controversial because they were too woke.
Now, they’re causing a stir because they’re too… crypto-Nazi?
Yes, apparently in the belief that Sydney Sweeney and American Eagle are out to get that all-important NSDAP dollar, online lefties have launched a campaign against an ad campaign featuring Sweeney clad in American Eagle’s denim.
The ads are indeed a bit provocative on the sexual side, although by the standards of 1985, not 2025. (Which is hardly surprising; for a jeans ad to provoke sexually in 2025, it’d have to be on OnlyFans, not social media.)
This is one of the tamer shots from the campaign:
Anyway, Sweeney has always been a favorite target for the left, including because she one, appears to exude healthy femininity without rainbow-colored hair, androgynous clothes, or anything like that, and two, she’s gone on record as ripping fake feminism in Hollywood.n
However, the outrage this time is because Sweeney is blonde and white and the tagline for the ads is “Sydney Has Great Jeans.”
Has the left gone off the deep end?
Yes, it’s a play on the fact that jeans and genes are homophones, and that genes can determine one’s attractiveness. This is, um, partially true.
Patient zero of this freakout is a popular left-wing X user with the handle @esjesjesj — a popular social media self-described “anti-Zionist” and “prison abolitionist” whose parents, if he really believes his own engagement farming, seem to have trusted in lead paint chips as an alternative to Flinstones chewables — who asked whether American Eagle meant “to include a bunch of Nazi dog whistles in this.”
Did they mean to include a bunch of Nazi dog whistles in this https://t.co/dpWECqu8DV
— evan loves worf (@esjesjesj) July 26, 2025
He then proceeded to believe that this was a hill that he was willing to die — or at least continue to farm engagement — on:
I dont’ like THINK american eagle is some sort of nazi company or this is even like 100% on purpose but it’s definitely capitalizing on every growing fascist sentiment in this country
— evan loves worf (@esjesjesj) July 26, 2025
The rest of the guy’s timeline over the same period was taken up with posts still claiming that the COVID-19 unvaccinated were dumb and evil and stupid, and also defending the English-language theme to the anime “Pokémon” as “one of the greatest pieces of music ever produced.”
Legitimately one of the greatest pieces of music ever produced https://t.co/mL316pKjuT
— evan loves worf (@esjesjesj) July 27, 2025
Forget the fact it sounds horrible, it’s from 1997 — arguably one of the great years in musical history, which gave us Radiohead’s “OK Computer,” Daft Punk’s “Homework,” Erykah Badu’s “Baduizm,” The Chemical Brothers’ “Dig Your Own Hole,” Mariah Carey’s “Butterfly,” Elliott Smith’s “Either/Or,” Missy Elliott’s “Supa Dupa Fly,” Björk’s “Homogenic,” Notorious BIG’s “Life After Death,” and those are just the ones I can pull from memory without actively looking it up.
And somehow this is take is literally only the third objectively wrongest thing on his X timeline in the past 72 hours, and by a relatively substantial margin. Just saying.
Nevertheless, while “evan loves worf” may be the worst of the offenders, he was only patient zero, and the contagion spread among those who hadn’t been vaccinated against the woke mind virus:
Sydney Sweeney being in an American Eagle ad is “fascist propaganda” according to the triggered tiktok libs pic.twitter.com/KtIafvaGvK
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) July 28, 2025
@vital_media_marketing #sydneysweeney #americaneagle ♬ original sound – Angie- VM Marketing
I’m not going to trouble you with the eighty-million weird and tearful reacts on social media, except to say that obviously, Christian conservatives probably feel two ways about this one: On one hand, the ads sell jeans via sexuality, on the other, they do so in a way that shows that corporations are no longer kowtowing to the “evan loves worf” banshee-screaming about white cis Nazi appropriative heteronormative fascist colonialism.
While I understand that’s fair, consider the fact that, as I said, these ads would have only been really been provocative in 1985, not 2025.
We live in a world that has gone as far as it can, sexually speaking; virtually nothing is taboo and electronic pornography is so pervasive that we all carry around with us a device, 24/7, that can provide it to us whenever we want. If anything, we’re pulling back after we’ve hit the wall and reassessing what the sexual revolution has done to us as a society.
On the other hand, the thing with wokeness is that there is no wall, only moving goalposts. Equality became equity, and equity became an always fungible goal that became ever more punitive to what was perceived as “normative.”
Suddenly, it wasn’t enough to not objectify women. In fact, what we should do is objectify obese trans men in the same way we objectified women because, you know, equity. And when the “evan loves worf” crowd gets what they want, they want more, because if their cause hits a wall they become irrelevant.
American Eagle doesn’t care.
Not only is Sydney Sweeney back as a figure of femininity, she’s posing in jeans by a Shelby GT350, baby! A beautiful woman, blue jeans, and a muscle car. It doesn’t get more American than that — beauty and the scream of 350 horses of freedom on the road.
Sydney Sweeney and a Shelby GT350.
You’ve got my attention. https://t.co/UxWhtlEQMP
— Blake Anderson (@BlakeAnderson) July 23, 2025
And American Eagle isn’t apologizing.
The U.K. Daily Mail noted that they brand didn’t comment for the story but the advertising is still out there and American Eagle Outfitters president Jennifer Foyle said that the campaign, which raises money for domestic violence charities, is about what they’re about.
“This fall season, American Eagle is celebrating what makes our brand iconic – trendsetting denim that leads, never follows,” Foyle said. “Innovative fits and endless versatility reflect how our community wears their denim: mixed, matched, layered and lived in.”
Whether or not you believe that copy is irrelevant. Once everyone realized the goalposts were moving to a horizon that never ended, they stopped letting them move. And now, we’re stuck with silliness like this.
Sure, would it be great if there were a world where modesty and sensibility lived in concert? Absolutely.
But if you have to have your choice between tame sexuality and libertines who are upset this isn’t a LGBTQ2S++-÷≥ model lecturing you about your body privilege from a Nissan Leaf, I’m going with the first every time.
It’s a sign that, as we continue to beat back wokeness, things are beginning to return to normal. Beautiful women are acknowledged as beautiful, kids are less and less believed to be born in the wrong bodies, pride in America is returning, all after a decade-long nightmare with wokeness.
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