There has been an insane meltdown this week over Sydney Sweeney’s new American Eagle ad campaign. And I have to tell you, I have a lot to say on this.
This is not just about “restoring hotness,” though it is partly about that. There is something to be said about the skin color and the celebration of the genes, and it is not what the left tells you. It is not a celebration of white supremacy, but it is an important marker in time and a signal of a shift in thinking that is both telling and important.
Beauty Standards
For the uninitiated, Sydney Sweeney is an American actress. She’s beautiful, she’s blonde, she’s got blue eyes and white skin, and she is in this new American Eagle ad campaign for jeans with the tagline “Sydney Sweeney Has Great Genes Jeans.”
Predictably, the left is completely freaked out over the ads, claiming they are about eugenics and white supremacy.
But I think that this campaign is resonating for a few reasons. Yes, of course, Sydney Sweeney is gorgeous. American Eagle accurately deduced it should pay her because people would want to look at her and would be drawn to their product if they saw this beautiful woman wearing it. They were absolutely right.
These ads say “hotness is back,” and that is important in 2025. We have been living through a five-year period where we were told we needed to celebrate Dylan Mulvaney as the new female beauty standard. It’s a no. Finally, we have an actual woman with amazing breasts and an obviously kick-ass body who is in her jeans, and it is wonderful.
We have been suffering with the elevation of homely people in our fashion ads and our fitness ads for years now, and we are over it. We miss attractive people. We are sick of trying to pretend that these objectively unattractive people are the new beauty standard. They are not.
They tried to cancel Jordan Peterson for saying things like that, but he was right. There is an objective standard of beauty – at least in so far as American cultural values go. It has nothing to do with white skin. Whitney Houston was probably one of the most beautiful Americans ever to walk the earth. You know it when you see it. You can have it if you are black, white, brown, whatever.
Stop Apologizing
But here is the piece no one is saying that I think needs to be said because it is real and there is nothing wrong with it: We are sick and tired of the nonsense where you are not allowed to ever celebrate someone who is white, blonde, and blue eyed; that we have to walk into a room apologetic for those things. In a way, this ad is the final declaration that we are done doing that sh-t.
It doesn’t mean we are better. But you know what? We are no worse than any other race, hair color, or eye color, and we are sick of being told that we are by having all of our “representation” (to borrow a term from the left) removed from television shows, movies, and historical plot lines that involve people who do look like us but suddenly have been deemed “too offensive” to remain white.
We are done with that bullsh-t. And by the way, you don’t get representation for other races by erasing white people and the roles that they have filled and replacing them with people of color. You create new roles in new stories and put black people, Hispanic people, Asian people, all people in the starring roles there. Create new art with that.
The answer was never to go back and start scrubbing Peter Pan to make Tinker Bell something other than a white girl with yellow hair; or to make Snow White a Latina instead of a white woman with black hair; or to turn all the white royalty in Bridgerton into people of color.
You can never satisfy the mob. The mob didn’t like what they did in Bridgerton. They complained that – notwithstanding the fact that they have made black actors play historically white characters – it still centers around a “primarily white narrative.” Well, it is about white people who existed, so, yes, whatever happened in their lives will, I guess by definition, be a “white narrative.” What are we supposed to do? How are we supposed to change it? I hesitate to even think. It is just ridiculous.
We are sick of it, and it is okay to say a white woman with blonde hair and blue eyes is gorgeous with great genes. Period.
High Risk, High Reward
As it turns out, the meltdown has had the effect of amplifying the ads and Sweeney herself way more than American Eagle could ever have hoped for. Their stock is up 20 percent. She has made them hundreds of millions of dollars. So, the great thing is we are going to get a whole lot more of it.
And I can only imagine what is happening in this young woman’s real life. She has gotten very famous over the past couple of years mostly because of her incredible beauty. She has had some acting roles but nothing hugely breakout. I knew her from White Lotus season one. She was great. But she has really gotten very famous for her beauty and her sex appeal (which is there in spades), and now she is a household name thanks to this ad.
I have to say: Good for American Eagle for doing it because it was a bit of a risk. We are not totally post-woke, but I have to tie it to what happened in November 2024. President Trump won, and it was the end of the fever swap we were in. It was the official end of all the nonsense, which has been dwindling ever since and will continue to dwindle.
The fact that the Sydney Sweeney ad was made and has been driving up sales is yet another declaration that the era of “woke” is dead. It is over. It officially died in November 2024, and now you are just getting your fingers on the pulse and realizing it is no longer beating.
Wokesters, come on over back to normalcy, if you can.
You can check out Megyn’s full analysis by tuning in to episode 1,119 on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen. And don’t forget that you can catch The Megyn Kelly Show live on SiriusXM’s Triumph (channel 111) weekdays from 12pm to 2pm ET.