Everything Is Content - Everything In Conversation: Sydney Sweeney's Jeans

Episode Date: August 6, 2025

Happy extra episode day for everything with a pulse and a podcast player app! This week we're diving into the depths of discourse... yes, Sydney Sweeney's genes/jeans.Is this a play for the American right-wing media, an orchestrated infamous marketing move or worse – just stupid? We answer this with your help and determine why Sydney Sweeney riles up the masses so much.Thank you for listening to us! <3 please could you vote for us in the British Podcast Awards? We would be so grateful and bonus points if you leave us a review wherever you're listening to us.love,O, R, B xxxSydney Sweeney advertThe Banal Provocation of Sydney Sweeney’s JeansThe Discourse Is Broken Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I'm Beth. I'm Richerra and I'm Anoni. And this is Everything in Conversation. This is your second helping of content to help keep you satiated for the week. We'd love if you'd give us a follow on Instagram and TikTok at Everything's Content Pod to keep up with these conversation topics and have your say in our extra episodes. And make sure you go and follow us on your podcast player app so you never miss an episode. And please do leave us a rating and a review wherever you're listening.

it truly is the lifeblood of this podcast. Also, please would you consider voting for us in the British podcast awards in the listener's choice category? We'll leave a link in the show notes, but we'd be so thrilled if you would. You just have to enter our name, everything is content,

put an email address and then click confirm in the email they send over. Thank you so much in advance. So after selling her bathwater and attending Jeff Bezos's controversial wedding, Sydney Sweeney has gone viral again, brackets, negative. This time she's been accused of promoting eugenics. So if anyone who is not aware of this, she's fronted a new American Eagle jeans campaign and

the tagline is, Sydney Sweeney has good jeans. As part of the campaign, there's been several videos, including one where she paints over the words, great jeans, that's jeans with a G, to become great genes with a J. The main ad, which has inflamed the internet, sees the euphoria actress say, are passed down from parents to offspring, often determining traits like hair, personality and even eye colour. My jeans are blue. In another, the camera pans down her body and she says, my body's composition is determined by my jeans. Before she says, eyes up here and it cuts back to her face. So there has been news report or news report about this whole saga. And according to Salon, eugenics movements in the US often promoted the idea of good genes to encourage reproductive

among white, able-bodied people while justifying the forced sterilisation of others. I have seen so much commentary about Sydney-Sweeney's jeans, Jeans with the G, and Jeans with the J, including people saying, this is what happens when you only have white people in a marketing room. Others have said it reads very badly in the current climate of Trump, far-right nationalism,

and swings back to a very violent, oppressive racism. I saw one social media user say it's not really about the genes, it's about who gets to be the face of Americans' best genes. with a Jew. So despite the controversy, the campaign actually caused American Eagle's stock to spike by as much as 16% in the days after. Analyst pointed to meme stock behavior, a viral surge driven by retail traders on Reddit and Stocktwits, not by fundamentals. So you might think that this might be controversial for the brand, but it seems like they really are getting cash dollars in return. So before we jump into anything, the update on

this story has been Sydney Sweeney's voter registration has blown up in the days after this campaign and the Guardian has reported that she was registered as a Republican voter in Florida a few months before Donald Trump won the second US presidency. And whether we like it or not, this has been drawn into the debate around the jeans, jeans with the G, jeans with the J, jeans with the J, and whether she is signagling her political history with this campaign or whether it has nothing to do with her and it's American Eagle, who should be facing the shots? What do you guys think of this whole discourse in question and also this campaign specifically? I, the internet being as fraught and fractured a place as it is, I thought, okay, this is

either, before I looked into it, I was like, okay, this is either a huge, you know, a huge deal of being made of something that is quite innocuous, you know, maybe it is a swing and a miss, maybe it is this trend now of focusing in the wrong direction and being almost swept up in media firestorm rather than looking at like the naked truth of what's going on but then I think the minute I I read like a few tweets about it I was I was like no this is this is worth some attention and thought so we don't kind of go sleep walking into disaster again like I think it's a clue it might not be the most subtle but I do I do think it's a clue very it's not this is not happening in 2016 some people being like this you know any other time this just

would not be a big deal and it's like well it's a big deal because it's happening in this and in this landscape and it's like a lot of ad dollars a lot of big marketing minds went into creating this it would be silly to just act like they didn't oopsie or this was some kind of mistake like I think that would be really naive so I think everything that I've seen I'm like this as part of a bigger picture this is not good news what do you think and I need I had the same reaction as you because at the beginning I was like well maybe it literally is just they thought jeans jeans that's a pun that's been done for years the J and the G then Dennis Jim is obviously normally blue and she has blue.

Like there's a world in which it's that basic. But then as you say, the minute you look at it for too long, it's like, oh, this points to all sorts of complicated and horrible things. And I think the difference is that, sure, there's a world where you had a marketing team who went for the lowest hanging fruit, didn't really think it through. But that in of itself is a problem, especially in 2025. Why is there not someone on that campaign team saying, actually guys, think about what this could look like. Even if it was as innocent as that and people genuinely did not have the

insight or the intellect or the knowledge to understand how and why this could point to something that is much more murky than just an advertising campaign for a pair of jeans, that's still a problem because it's like whether or not the intention is that the thing that happens is the outcome and there is a world in which you could have had someone, had this ad made, had someone then go, actually guys, I think that this points to something that we're not trying to say and then found a fresher, more interesting way of presenting the same thing. It's a pun, I get it. It is clever marketing.

I think it's also based on a Brook Shields, which is also extremely problematic ad from years and years ago when she was very, very young for Calvin Klein. So there's a like a sartorial history in it as well, but yes, that it didn't need to be this campaign. And I think that in the context of everything that you said with Sidney Sweeney. And actually, there was a really funny tweet that Pollyester posted, which was like, Sydney Sweeney's PR team obviously hate her because she's doing ads like. like this stuff to do with like body wash and soap and she should be wearing Dior and doing gorgeous campaigns for like some luxury perfume brand. So yes, I think that the more you dig into it there is just a massive well underneath that you cannot ignore as much as I would love

to say, well maybe they just didn't think that's just as bad. Yeah, I mean just to touch on the Brooks Shields element of it all, as soon as I started digging into that facet, it just made me further frustrated and just kind of grossed out by the entire thing. So in 1980, there was this infamous Calvin Klein advert when a 15-year-old at that point, Brooke Shields, tiny minuscule teenager Brooke Shields, did this very kind of controversial, very sexualized advert. And in it, she says, The Secrets of Life lies in the Hidden Genetic Code. Genes are fundamental genes with the GFY in determining the characteristics passed down. Calvin Klein, the survival of the fittest, and then the tagline was,

you want to know what comes between me and my Calvin's, nothing. And it was so astronomically viral, and multiple networks just refused to play it because she was so young and it was so controversial. And that advert over-sexualized her to global audiences and helped kind of pave the way for her image not really becoming her own anymore. So this advert, not only in the messaging of the genes with a G,

really rips from that, there's even just kind of stylistic points where the narrator, I can't remember what he says exactly. Oh, it's something like, Sydney Sweeney has good jeans. And it's this very American, Americana voice that kind of like slaps the logo on the advert. That is the exact replica of what happens in the Brooks Shields advert. So this is not necessarily even going in a new direction. Jeans have been very controversial, very provocative. People have done this messaging before, yes. But I think picking on Sydney Sweeney specifically, like you both said, they know exactly what they're doing. She, and there was a New York piece about this, the banal provocation of Sydney

Sweeney's jeans by Doreen St. Felix. And she says, Sweeney on the precipice of totalising fame has an adoring legion, the most extreme of whom want to recruit her as a kind of Aryan princess. To them, she signals, as my colleague Lauren Michelle Jackson wrote, a quote, rejoicing in a perceived return to a bygone beauty standard in the wake of all that overzealous feminism they blame on the left. So I just think they've picked a person who is the most provocative figurehead for a certain type of movement of eugenics right now, and then they slap bang jeans with a G, and just get her to basically replicate this very problematic, very offensive kind of language around sterilisation of people who aren't white, and able-bodied and thin. I just, I think you can't accidentally lead yourself to this road. You can't accidentally find yourself there, you know? There's so much on the back of that that I want to talk about.

also about how Sidney Sweeney is a very interesting choice for this kind of like of the beauty standard because it was not so many weeks ago that the men of the right were turning on her as sort of this mid-hidious hag. But before I do, as you were sort of reading that about the advert that it that it's a nod to this really problematic advert with Brooke Shields who just a few years came out with this documentary which kind of like put such a finer point on her victimhood and her, you know, the predation that went on and how she really was harmed. I just thought the distance between the 20-10s, the things that were done in advertising and now, you would never, in a million years, nod to such a, to that advert.

And if you did, the backlash would be huge. Someone would be forced to be fired. Someone would apologize. That's the first point. Again, I was reading the, so American Eagle came out with a statement on their Instagram story on Friday, last Friday. They kind of walked nothing back. They said, quote, Sydney, Sweeney has great genes, is and always was. about the jeans with a jay her jeans her story will continue to celebrate how everyone wears

their AE jeans with confidence their way great jeans look good on everyone like it's so mealy mouth it's so like oh you thought it's such a departure like shockingly so from the way that brands talk to their customers or talk to the quote unquote woke left or talk to kind of liberal consumers even i would say like eight years ago maybe less it's so it's absolutely shocking I think to just look at the distance traveled in such a short time. And like for people that might think, well, it's not real. This is advertisement. Like this is exactly how it's so informative of how we talk to one another.

It's like canary in the coal mine for what's going on in the culture. And I think even seeing that, I was like, oh, we are. We are so done out here. But yes, also wanted to discuss Sydney Sweeney. Like it feels like it was just five minutes ago. She was being lambasiders being like a big ugly pig by the same men who are now like that's our woman like it's so weird so we've had some really interesting messages about that

and there's been both sides of the coin kind of both sides we presented Daisy said at the risk of sounding flippin I don't think it's that deep really don't see the drama here I took it as an obvious pun on her being hot and then Hannah said maybe in a different political climate we'd be able to see it as just about jeans but when there's currently a very conservative push of in Verticaum's westerners should be white with blue eyes look what they brackets immigrants took from us you just can't make an ad this it's feeding into that racist sentiment a mainstream brand echoing that message is affirming

the racist and the last one which i thought was an interesting thing to say it's kind of what i was saying as well but i do now disagree with it which is alice said as the saying goes don't ascribe to malice what you can ascribe to stupidity i can't help like feel like this is just a bit of a tone deaf but harmless marketing that has been blown out of all proportion but i think the crux of it is whichever again like whichever is true it's still not right like how you get getting it that wrong in 2025, it's still a big dog whistle. And I think the context of it being this time and era, it being Sydney Sweeney, maybe they knew it, maybe it's the most clever marketing of all, maybe they knew it would cause such outrage. I don't know. Either way,

it's actually incredibly good marketing. No press is bad press. I read such an interesting piece just generally about the outrage by Parker Malloy for her substack, the present age. And she kind of posits the theory that before anyone actually had a chance to even be offended by this. The right blew out proportion, the fact that people were really angry about the advert, which created the discourse. It almost inflated the discourse

before anyone actually had a chance to be upset or share their sentiments. So she says, within approximately 37 seconds, the internet did what the internet does. But here's the thing, when you actually look at this quote, massive backlash, it starts to feel a bit manufactured. Sure, some TikTokers made videos

calling it fascist propaganda. A Columbia University lecturer analyzed it eugenic messaging. But when you dig into the actual numbers, when you look for the hordes liberals supposedly melting down over a jeans ad, they're surprisingly hard to find. What you can find in abundance is the backlash to the backlash. Vice President J.D. Vance gleefully telling podcast hosts that Democrats attacking Sydney Sweeney for being beautiful is, quote, how you're going to win the midterm. The White House communications director calling critics, quote, warped and moronic. Ted Cruz rushing to defend a jeans commercial. Countless right-wing accounts showing the same hand

full of critical TikToks as evidence of widespread liberal hysteria. And I think that is such an interesting point because I think that's something I picked up on as well. It feels like when I was looking for evidence of people being upset about this, it feels like people were, you know, people were kind of sharing it, but it wasn't the biggest discourse point I have seen by a country mile. I think the Coldplay scandal really felt like that birthed way more takes, way more criticisms online, an interesting kind of sprawling conversation, if not argument between all

these different sides. I just didn't see the same thing for this. I saw one TikToker who was the main TikToker behind all of this and her points were really interesting, but it just felt quite sporadic. So I wonder what you think about possibly the idea that something like this really plays back into American Eagles hands because it inflates this idea of cultural commentary and the right wing are just ready to grasp on a subject like this and basically just blow it out proportion to help fuel the culture wars. Yeah, it feels very smart. It feels like it is doing exactly what either it was designed to do or what they have sort of moulded it to do, which is paint Liberals as these completely unhinged, focus on the wrong things,

can't reason with them, we'll get stampeded underneath the March of Progress, which is what the writer saying, we are the smart, sentient voice, we get things done, look at them falling apart. Like I saw people going, I heard that liberals are buying American Eagle, genes just to burn them and you're like no one is doing that but that is very much a thing that happened with and I forget what it was but it was I think it was during the kind of

2010's Black Lives Matter movement really focusing around like sports and sports merch and that did happen people were burning sportswear that they already owned or like buying to burn like people the right wing also did boycott was it cause light

for doing a campaign with a trans woman like these are examples and it's just it's so brazen which is what you'd expect of them. So brazen to say, look at what the left is doing. The left is not doing this, but it is very much part of the playbook off the right to burn things to sort of, to destroy and tear apart and things. And I've seen that and it just feels like, am I living through the looking glass? Like it feels completely so much, everything's bullshit now. Everything's just not true and is being reported as truth. And this, from American Eagle, I think this has been,

it's been perfect. As you said at the top, like the share prices or whatever, like stock options. up. This brand is in everyone's mouth. The right, which has, you know, there's money there have adopted this as like one of theirs. They'll spend the money as they did when other brands came out as like the anti-cores, the anti-Nike, whatever it is. Money will flow that in that direction. It just feels so fucking stupid. Yeah, if anything now, it's actually made it become more of a mainstay for people that hold those beliefs to actually feel like, oh my God, this brand represents what I think. It's interesting because Funula said it's not her fault. It's the brands. She's just paid to be there. Now,

I'm actually back on X. And when this ad first came out, actually all I saw was people just laughing at Sidney Sweeney doing another ad campaign that was kind of capitalizing on the way that she looked. And a lot of those people that I follow are very vocal, very vocally liberal and left wing. And it wasn't immediate this kind of call out about the eugenic undertones or overtones of this campaign. And I do wonder, yeah, was it a chicken or an egg that started it? Was it the right saying that the left is saying this? And then people were like, actually we are saying that. It does seem that. But whatever happens, the right seem to win. When we come to bat for something that we see to be problematic, it only ever gains on their side and gives them more ammunition to say that anyone who thinks like this as an idiot or, you know, we're just snowflakes, it's incredibly frustrating because it is really shocking when you dig down into it. But then I also find it very frustrating that are very often well-balanced, interesting, introspective, and sometimes that quite educational insights into why big media campaigns on the surface

might just seem like a hot girl in jeans actually called to something much greater can be squashed so easily and deftly by these really loud voices on the right and that it does feel like you're kind of shouting into a void and everything you say just gets swallowed up and furthers their cause that is incredibly frustrating yeah you're right what could have been in really interesting conversation just feels so flattened and it just falls into the same tropes like you were saying Beth of just, I don't know, the right jumping on. Liberals just can't get anything done. They just argue amongst themselves. They look how hysterical they are. And it's just, I don't

know, it's just really frustrating and it's exhausting. Finding the same discourse patterns play out every time and it doesn't help anyone. It doesn't feel like this conversation has got us anywhere interesting or positive or helpful or useful. I think also, I don't know what I think about people now finding Sydney Sweeney's voting record. I mean, I obviously would never vote Republican, but it just, it feels like that doesn't feel particularly helpful either. I mean, the whole thing's just a mess. I just feel really frustrated and disappointed. Also seeing the viral campaigning, especially when it offends and it kind of dog whistles to these really offensive tropes works. And this is ultimately a success story for the company, rather than being what it should be.

I don't know, just a very critical moment where everyone comes together and we can point the finger back at this company and just say, this is fucking offensive. Don't do this shit. Don't pull this shit. We as consumers have power and we will remove that power. Now we have such of aggressive, far right, right-wing consumer base that can just go toe-to-toe, if not overpower, any of these kind of discourse points. It's almost like consumer activism just pales in comparison in a moment like this. It just makes no difference. And also, I don't know if you guys saw Duncan Donuts pull a similar thing. They got one of the actors from the Samurai Turned Pretty, which is a hilarious, amazing show that is also quite terrible. And essentially, it's this, like, very good-looking guy. He was walking around a pool and he was like, my tan, it's genetics.

And it followed, I think, two or three days after the American Eagle ads blew up. And we know Duncan Donuts from having used Ben Affleck dropping the box of donuts and coffee are really into viral marketing. They're very clever with what they do with social moments. I don't think that's an accident. I think it's a very deliberate ploy to just kind of bounce off the reverberations of this viral moment.

And it's just, I don't know, I'm just tired. I'm so tired. Why is everything such brain rot whilst also being so deeply offensive and also making us feel like completely disenfranchised at the same time? When there's a campaign that is perhaps more liberal or I actually hate saying woke now

because it's just been completely bastardised but let's just use it in the context of this. when it's, say, a makeup brand using a trans model or an ampute or someone that lives in a bigger body, the people, and again, the left and the right are such redundant terms, but it's just an easy cat tool for describing. They will also go nuts. So it's not like we're the only community that get online and air our anger when we feel like an ad is doing something that it shouldn't be doing. They will be the first people and actually often to quite great effects, campaigns will get taken down, brands will be boycotted. they do hold a lot more of the power and the money in this capitalist ever increasingly fascist society. So I think that's what I also find annoying is, and we've said it before and it's

such a boring trite thing to say, but really it is the people on the right that are the biggest snowflakes because they cannot handle any instance of kind of difference or liberal or moving forward within, especially in the context of sort of like marketing and capitalism because they they love the capitalism, those people. So I think that that's also a really important thing to point out. but this isn't the first time a brand has caused outrage. And in fact, that community are often the people that are much more outrage for much, actually positive things that absolutely are not harming anyone apart from their very fragile egos.

There's a great sub-sec called Thinking Out Loud, which is by writer and brand strategist Nikita Waliah, who I've known her for about 10 years at this point. She's very smart, very switched on, excellent what she does. And she wrote a piece, I think over the weekend, which touched on this campaign and the rage that is central to, its success. And the piece is called The Rage is the Machine. And there's one bit I think is really interesting. I think that sort of speaks to that what makes a campaign successful

in this moment in time. And I'll quote it. The tactic is anger. Make something divisive enough to force discourse. Bonus if it's visual and easily memes. Watch it go viral. Issue a vague statement. You do not need to stand for something. You have to spark something. And what algorithms traffic in fastest is rage. In a healthy cultural moment, anger might be one signal among many. Something that rises, gets metabolized and leads to action. But now the anger is a doom loop. Something is said. Everyone is mad. A few people shortstock. Then it disappears. We're living inside a cycle. Official government accounts are rage baiting. Brands are quick to make you feel stupid. Attention is scarce. But anger is abundant. End quote. And she kind of goes on to discuss how this

isn't a 2025 phenomenon, this kind of rages cultural currency. It's just that our mediums are different. And she talks about how we had like the high gloss antagonism of the 90s, like provocative magazine covers, cutting headlines. But in a digital age, it's just much easier to do. It kind of comes before. We can provoke so much easier. Like each of us are like a kind of provocation machine, like each in our own. We're like one engine among many engines driving the system forward.

It's a kind of society in a culture that thrives on this collective rage. and she says like everyone is a media company of one and that's what I think of I think a brand is not left or right a brand a brand is a brand a brand is a money making enterprise but a brand will do what any kind of organism does which is find the best way to survive find what is abundant in the culture and then feast on it and we have arrived at like the far end of rage

and rage when you kind of consider again left and right so imperfect but like what a party or what a movement thrives on the right is a party of division and hate and I'll say that with my chest and so I think in this moment they are having an absolute field day with the way that we all consume and the way we all chop and the way we all think it feels like if we want any chance of kind of moving the needle back or turning the dial it's like we cannot also but I mean I don't know what the answer is but we cannot also be rage machines we can't also be kind of like provocation engines I mean I don't I think the piece is fantastic, and we'll link that in the show notes,

but I think it's a very interesting way to look at the marketing side of this and how it feeds into like the bigger political picture. That sounds like such a smart piece, and it's completely bang on about how attention is almost like the new currency. And, I mean, we all know we've spoken about it. It's a very common phrase, the attention economy, but somebody was also telling me about a New York Times podcast, the Ezra Klein show, where he talks about how the attention economy

is devouring Gen Z and the rest of us. and it touches on the exact same themes of the piece you were talking about where it seems like the race now for brands, companies, political parties is no longer that the product has to satisfy the consumer. It's to basically win your attention. And I think that is very much the case with this entire situation. And not to sound really trite or just kind of stating the obvious, but the reason why we are talking about this is because it has, it is a lowest common denominator of things that would piss people off and start a conversation. The reason why it's so hard to get people to think and talk about what's happening in Gaza and the kind of

horrifying, you know, unfurling violence and genocide that is happening over there is because it just doesn't have the same marketing push. It's not easy to get people to think about the most horrifying situation in our living lives right now. But at the same time, we're getting distracted by this absolute bullshit and it's so frustrating. They are successful at gaining attention. The Cole play scandal is successful gaining attention. It's just all these kind of stupid scenarios that feel emblematic of the time we're in, whereas actually the thing that is emblematic of the time we're living in is this horrifying situation that people are, you know, increasingly unable to protest on the streets of the UK because of legislation that actively prosecutes them

for it. And I don't know, it's just, it's so depressing. And I don't mean to like bring it there, but it also feels like you kind of have to look at the whole picture that the game's being played by brands, by politicians, by companies to speak to us are utilising the worst tricks that they can over talking about the things that matter for standing for anything of substance. And it's just awful. Well, I think they're two sides of the same coin, right?

Like we live in a society where it's apparently okay to allude to eugenics and absolutely frowned upon and not allowed to talk about genocide. And we've spoken about it a lot. But when I do post about, and everyone says this, but I did it recently the other day and I really noticed because my story views before that maybe like 15 to 18,000 people have watched my story.

And I posted some stories about Palestine and 2,000 people saw them. That is not by accident. That is by design that these platforms are not pushing out certain things. It is the same thing. And especially when you really think about it with the backdrop of everything that is happening in Gaza, what right-minded company do not understand when we are literally wiping out an entire population that to make this kind of joke, as they're saying, you know, just a silly little thing isn't intentional. and we had a message from Kate which said,

Hello, I'm a marketing academic in the space. Marketers spend so much time thinking about every single word in their copy. It would be unlikely that it was a mistake or a play on words with the color of the genes. Brand activism by definition is advertising partisan politics. And while we might have had an uptick in more progressive politics in the last several years, the political environment, E.G. Trump, is showing that conservative values are accepted and that this is probably the beginning of more conservative right-wing advertising. Also, it shows that it doesn't matter what your audience, what you're advertising

intention is how audience responds or interprets your ads is what meaning is being conveyed. And I thought that was a really great message. Yeah, I think it's, if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, it is a duck. If in this case you have a blonde-haired, blue-eyed American woman with Republican family members, I mean, and we know that she's registered as a Republican. We don't know who she's voted for. She registered as a Republican in 2024 in her home state, I think. So this is what we know.

But again, that speaks to something. And she starred in this ad based on the conceit that she has good genes. and she is a white, blonde-haired, blue-eyed American woman at a time where fascism, you know, is on the rise in American worldwide, where white supremacists are increasingly emboldened. Like, I just don't, I think, to suggest, oh, it's a woke over correction, let's not worry about it, again, suggests we are sleepwalking into disaster. And as Vivian said, in RDM's, if people of colour are saying it is steep,

I think we should believe them. Sometimes it's not all that difficult, and you just don't want to be, I get it, you don't want to be the friend that's too woke, which is, again, a meme. I agree with an only on the woke point. you don't want to be like faffing about like trying to read the tea leaves of fascism when fascism is actually doing the old Roman salute on stage and saying no no no I believe all this stuff you don't want to be like I wonder what this means like looking in the wrong direction

I am stunned by the whole thing and I'm so interested actually direction this conversation has gone in because I was thinking like oh isn't it funny that Sydney Sweeney was this like the right has repackaged her so cleanly and so immediately as their girl everyone's admitting to a crush on her she is like protect in the kind of arms of the right versus as I said a few weeks ago or a few months ago she was everyone was discussing is she is she mid is she just like a ugly woman with big tits like the whole thing has an almost cartoonish quality but what we've ended up discussing I think is actually like the bones of it like the heartbeat of it is what does it say about this world that we're living in that we are having this discussion at this point

in history that they are so vehemently championing this woman for a jeans ad like it's just everything about this moment in time that I loathe condensed into one news story. It's fascinating, isn't it? Because I just can't stop thinking about what happened with Sabrina Carpenter's new album cover. And compared to this, that feels like so unbelievably unwarranted compared to a literal eugenics, not in an advert compared to, you know, visuals that provoked a reaction from people. Again, attention economy, it worked, right? It feels like if we can't say anything about a literal reference to genetics. I don't know what we can create discourse around. I don't know what is worth talking about then at that point. We had a message from Emily who said,

Sydney Sweeney has been telling us who she is for years. I think she said a few years ago that she feels like she has to constantly work to be able to make money, survive in the industry, which I admire. But the last year or so, it feels like she will do literally anything for it. For me, it was the base of sweating. It made me realize she clearly has no morals at all and it gave me the it. The Gene's ad is deliberately playing on eugenics. There is no way they don't know what that means, and especially in how comfortable people feel being racist these days and being supported by the US government in these opinions. It's just bad taste and she knows what she is doing. We can't say in one breath, she is a smart business weapon and then also claim she is an

innocent porn. And yeah, I think I really want to know what you both think when it comes to laying the blame. Obviously, American Eagle are the people who have created the messaging. They have cast her in this advert, they have probably done all the creative, the strategy when it comes to doing the nod to Brooke Shields. But at the same time, is it ridiculous to not point the finger at Sidney Sweeney when she is fronting this campaign, when it feels like it's becoming a line of instance after instance where these like morally very, you know, indefensible things are just kind of featuring her at the front line and centre. I think what is obvious, it does feel like she's very set on building an empire.

She's been very open about these things, like just the volume of ads. I think she's clear. She wants to make a lot of money outside of her acting career. And, you know, I don't think she's signing up to projects with a view to furthering the Aryan agenda. I think she simply does not care.

She is getting her bag, making probably an eye-watering amount of money. I think as consumers, we have to not make excuses for the rich and the famous. And it kind of reminds me of something that I'm trying to teach myself or trying to remember, which is like celebrities are not our friends,

It is always wiserest to assume that they are morally bankrupt, self-interested freaks, then assume that they are decent and will kind of behave in the interest of anyone but themselves. It's like the old kind of like men should begin in prison and work their way out about celebrities. I think when people like, I can't believe this multimillionaire film style would do this. And it's like, well, I've got a bridge to say you in that case. I really find there is no reason here. I don't think it's misogyny to think, yes, this is a person that is. cares but no one but themselves, like just simply does not mind.

There may have been, you know, these brands, I assume, are courting her, but also you have to think of like, what is my persona? Because she wants it all. She obviously wants to be an actor that's doing serious roles, and I think she's got the chops to do it. But she also does not want to lose out on a single big paycheck from brands that are pandering to, I think, just the worst people in society, like the kind of like horny, incells, brain adult freaks and in this case people that would not blink an eye at the suggestion that her genes

are superior. I don't have much space or grace to give her on this on this count, unfortunately. We have one devil's avocado for that from Jess, which is my theory is that the strategy is to lean into the hypersexualized male gays image so that when her film comes out, a biopic about a boxer, the physical transformation, she put on a bunch of muscle and looks less firm, is more pronounced and extreme, wins some awards, etc. a la Matthew McConaughey. But then it goes, it still feeds into what you said, Beth, which is ultimately, if that is her strategy, it's still at what cost are you willing to bolster your own career in order? Because these things, I think the thing that crucially is so important is you can say it's just an ad, you can say it's just this,

but this is exactly how propaganda and fascism wheedles its way into society. It's got a very pretty face and it might look like, oh, it's just this, it's just that, but eventually before you know it, and it's already happening, we're already living in it. We have every right to stand up and point things out like you said, Beth, rather than feeling like we being a bit over the top, you're not. This is always how it starts. And hopefully it doesn't get to the end of it. Thank you so much for listening this week. And I have to say, we had some of the best messages we've ever had for this topic. So thank you so much. Quick reminder that we're on Instagram and TikTok at Everything is Content Pod with extra behind the scenes content and ways

for you to take part and suggest topics for upcoming episodes. If you've enjoyed this episode or literally any episode ever, ever, ever, please do leave us a rating and a lovely five-star review on your podcast player out. It means the world to all of us. See you on Friday. Bye. Bye.