Explained: American Eagle’s Sydney Sweeney ad under fire for ‘Nazi’ link

New Delhi: American fashion retailer American Eagle is currently facing a lot of criticism for its new advertisement which feature popular Hollywood actress Sydney Sweeney. The jeans advertisement which was aimed at raising awareness about domestic abuse is instead being accused of having racial undertones, being labelled as "tone-deaf” and "Nazi” by many critics online.

The ad shows Sweeney in a pair of American Eagle telling the viewers, "I’m not here to tell you to buy American Eagle jeans... And I definitely won’t say they’re the most comfortable jeans I’ve ever worn, or that they make your butt look amazing." This is followed by the slogan "Sydney Sweeney has great jeans" appear on the screen.

This is then followed by the actress saying, "See what I did there, right?” - highlighting the "jeans” / "genes” double entendre. The ad was followed by another video from the brand where Sweeney is seen approaching a billboard with the phrase "great genes” and striking out the word "genes” and replacing it with "jeans.”

In another spot, Sweeney says: "Genes are passed down from parents to offspring, often determining traits like hair colour, personality, and even eye colour... My jeans are blue.” This is followed by a voiceover that states: "Sydney Sweeney has great Jeans."

This overemphasis on the ‘jeans’ and ‘genes’ pun has not gone down with most observers and critics on the internet. Accusations of furthering "Nazi” propaganda and White supremacists' ideologies are in ubiquity on online posts related to the advertisement.  

The word play of "great genes” is being seen to have racial connotations, with Sweeney’s blue-eyed and blonde-haired look being looked at as echoing Nazi eugenic messaging.

"I didn't know what everyone was freaking out about with that Sydney Sweeney ad but then I realized I should watch it with the sound on and OH MY GOD. Yeah that’s some Aryan eugenics shit,” on user wrote on X. Another commented, "So Sydney (& American Eagle) somehow expect audiences to not interpret this visual as a euphemism for eugenics and white supremacy?”

The underlying messaging of the ad is being seen in relation to Nazi racial theories. Hitler became obsessed with 'racial purity' and used the word 'Aryan' to describe his idea of a 'pure German race'. The ideal Aryan was seen to exhibit specific racial characters like having a pale skin, blond hair and blue eyes. This ‘ideal’ racial profile of the ‘Aryan’ was seen by Hitler as the one that has the ‘duty’ to ‘rule’ the world.

In an attempt to visualise this vision, the Nazi regime initiated a number of persecutory revolving around the theory of racial hygiene, or ‘eugenics’. Advocating for the improvement of the human species by selectively mating people with specific desirable hereditary traits, these policies were racially exclusionary and slowly became violent. 

The exclusion through "breeding out” undesirable racial traits reached an excessive level where non-Aryan races such as Jews and Romani were considered as inferior by the Nazis. Many regulations were enacted to enforce such views such as the Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring, which resulted in thousands of forced sterilizations. Racial exclusion and segregation in Nazi Germany finally led to the genocide of millions of Jews in Germany.

While such ideas are no longer in vogue, at least not publicly, they have existed with fringe far-right and neo-Nazi groups in the US and Europe. The idea of racial purity, especially of the ‘white’ European identity has persisted. It is the characteristics associated with this idea that have been seen to be propagated by the new American Eagle advertisement featuring Sydney Sweeny which has had the internet in a frenzy.