Marketing Eugenics Wrapped in Blue Jeans

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FEATURING ANOA CHANGA - President Donald Trump weighed in on the controversial ads by American Eagle featuring the young white actor Sydney Sweeney and its not-so-subtle nod to eugenics. “ If Sydney Sweeney is a registered Republican, I think her ad is fantastic,” said Trump. 

The new ad campaign features the actor in various sultry and sexually suggestive poses, with a raspy voice over discussing her genetic traits before claiming she has “great jeans." This reference to white racial purity echoes claims that Trump and his backers have often made about immigrants as criminals with “bad genes.”

Anoa Changa is a southern-based movement journalist, narrative strategist, podcast producer, and retired attorney. She is a contributor to NewsOne and has bylines in Truthout, DAME Magazine, Scalawag, Rewire News Group, and Essence. She just published a story at NewsOne called “Sydney Sweeney, American Eagle Ad Appeals To Racist ‘Good Genes’ Ideology” 

ROUGH TRANSCRIPT:

Sonali Kolhatkar: So first, let's talk about the ad itself before we get to the bigger story and the history of eugenics in this country. You know, there's claims that, oh, it's all in good fun. It's innocent. She's supposed to be this telegenic actress, and it's a reference to her being “hot.” But you don't buy that? 

Anoa Changa: I mean, it's not, right? When you actually go back and look at various aspects of the ad campaign that American Eagle itself put out on its Instagram page, its Facebook—I think it took down one of the clips from its YouTube page. But the one clip that I think really got everyone going was a clip that literally is Sydney Sweeney, describing her own physical characteristics, right? Like her own genes and the fact that we get good genes, like genes come from our parents, right? And then she talks about her blue eyes and the camera pans to her blue eyes. 

So it's not just this little quip about like genes, like having good genes. Because I got good genes, so I fit in these jeans so well, and I know that's like a tongue twister for some of us, but like, really it was appealing to this ideology that somehow with being apparently appealing, appearing blonde hair, being blue eye, made her have good jeans. But then in fact, it's also talking about the jeans that she's wearing.