A report on the ABC News program Good Morning America First Look on Tuesday compared the American Eagle clothing company’s new ad campaign featuring actress Sydney Sweeney to ‘Nazi propaganda’ for employing a well-used wordplay of ‘genes’ for marketing blue jeans.
Not everyone is falling for the leftist agit-prop. Car version:
Do the angry liberal women losing their minds over this realize half the ads in the 80s and 90s looked just like it?
Overt heterosexuality was still allowed back then. #SydneySweeney pic.twitter.com/wd7g3fesmN
— Tara Servatius (@TaraServatius) July 29, 2025
Talking about good genes/jeans:
As a PROUD black man, I see nothing wrong with Sydney Sweeney and American Eagle parading her “good genes/jeans.”
Celebrating blue eyes and blonde hair isn’t “white supremacy.” Those are conventionally attractive, GOOD GENES. That doesn’t mean they’re the ONLY good genes. pic.twitter.com/FNfcpHuXZg
— Xaviaer DuRousseau (@XAVIAERD) July 28, 2025
GMA First Look anchor Rhiannon Ally said “the play on words is being compared to Nazi propaganda with racial undertones.”
ABC News interviewed professor Robin Landa with Kean University, who likened the American Eagle ad campaign to the early 20th Century American eugenics movement that justified white supremacism.
The ABC News report was posted on X by the poster known as MAZE:
“The blond haired blue eyed actress talks about genes as in DNA being passed down…”
“Nazi propaganda with racial undertones…”
This is Good Morning America. This is ABC News. pic.twitter.com/dmvZjQy0B3
— MAZE (@mazemoore) July 29, 2025
Landa also spoke to Newsweek (excerpt):
“The campaign’s pun isn’t just tone-deaf—it’s historically loaded,” Professor Robin Landa told Newsweek. https://t.co/7Ym62ep6Tb
— Newsweek (@Newsweek) July 28, 2025
Advertising expert Robin Landa, a professor at Michael Graves College at Kean University, told Newsweek: “The campaign’s pun isn’t just tone-deaf—it’s historically loaded.”
Landa said that the phrase “good genes” was once central to American eugenics ideology, which promoted white genetic superiority and enabled the forced sterilization of marginalized groups.
Landa added that, when major brands use language with such weight, they risk reinforcing harmful ideologies under the guise of clever messaging.
Landa said that careless wordplay in advertising can help normalize exclusionary beliefs with consequences that extend far beyond product sales.
In the 1980s, Calvin Klein spokesmodel Brooke Shields did a similar ad using the gene/jeans wordplay without controversy about the wording, however there was controversy at the time over Shields being a teenager under 18 at the start of her modeling for Calvin Klein.
The current controversy has apparently not hurt American Eagle with reports its stock valuation has increased in the past month:
And the stock’s up 25%.
American Eagle is betting they can sell jeans to normal people, not a tiny minority of deranged harpies. https://t.co/K3ePyToBBp pic.twitter.com/vpzRT0I83P
— Douglass Mackey (@DougMackeyCase) July 28, 2025
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