The Most Uncool Thing You Can Do Is Have A Meltdown Over A Commercial For Jeans

Can people just act normal for one second?

This is a photo Sydney Sweeney to which I have added a Hitler mustache

On Friday, American Eagle released an ad with Sydney Sweeney for jeans. She’s partially undressed, eye-fucking the camera, and says:

“Genes are passed down from parents to offspring, often determining traits like hair color, personality, and even eye color. My jeans are blue.”

Narrator: “Sydney Sweeney has great jeans.”

Fin.

Get it? Because jeans and genes sound the same. She starts by talking about genes, but then she does a little switcheroo and she’s talking about jeans—and you never really noticed the jeans because you were too busy being stunned by her hotness. Then you realize it’s an ad for jeans and have to retroactively understand what just happened

Like all puns, this is stupid. Unlike most puns, this is at least sort of memorable. Who cares.

Who cares? I’ll tell ya who cares: the most insufferable people on the internet, that’s who.

The ad is a Nazi ad, duh. How is it a nazi ad? The real question is, how isn’t it a Nazi ad? Because it’s obviously a Nazi ad. Let me count the ways:

1. It’s visual and the Nazis loved visuals.

2. It’s in English, a Germanic language.

3. Sydney Sweeney is blonde and blue-eyed, and the Nazis loved those two things.

4. American Eagle? Eagle??? Hitler loved eagles! Americans love bald eagles, but this is not a bald eagle. It’s just an eagle. Could have hair, could not have hair. How am I supposed to know? Might as well call it American Swastika!

5. The Nazis liked eujeanics I mean eugenics.

6. Sydney Sweeney = SS = makes you think!

It might as well have been directed by Leni Riefenstahl!

What’s that? Not convinced? Sounds like you might need to huff more gasoline.

Oh, too good to huff gasoline? Fine. I’ll stop too, and we can talk about how stupid this outrage is.

This is really stupid

The people mad about this ad have cats in their brains, and those cats have rabies and need to be put down.

This is cuckoo stuff, okay? The backlash is insane and has prompted a natural backlash to the backlash. The second backlash is completely deserved, and I think many people have had fun mocking the rabid, cat-brained lunatics who prompted it.

This paranoid liberal impulse to see fascist dog whistles everywhere ends up functionally doing the far right’s job for them. We disown the most popular, iconic parts of American life—blue jeans! Hollywood sex symbols! Beautiful blonde women! We run from the center of our own culture like it’s radioactive, then act surprised when reactionaries move in to claim it.

Sydney Sweeney is not a Nazi. She’s a Beach Boys song made flesh. She’s the wholesome sex symbol, the wink of sunlit Americana in denim cutoffs. She’s blonde, hot, and smiling—and for some reason, that now triggers an entire class of progressive panic attacks. The left shouldn’t be telling people that if they find Sydney Sweeney attractive, they’re one goose step from fascism. That is not a winning frame.