The left-wing furor over the "Nazi-inspired, eugenics-supporting" Sydney Sweeney American Eagle jeans ad is finally abating.
Are they bored and, like any bored two-year-old, are moving on to something else to occupy their minds? Or do they recognize that most Americans like what Miss Sweeney is selling?
Sweeney is selling sex and jeans. There's nothing more American. An appeal to the prurient in a nation founded by Quakers and protestant rebels may make some people uncomfortable, but there's nothing raunchy or untoward about Miss Sweeney's presentation. She's a beautiful young woman — the kind of woman Americans have been in love with since forever. Jean Harlow, Theda Bara, and the original "It" Girl, silent film star Clara Bow, all had sex appeal and the same kind of engaging personality that Sweeney seems to exhibit.
Sweeney's politics (she's a registered Republican in Florida) are immaterial to the controversy. The leftist critique of the ads centers on the idea that they promote a "whiteness" that needs to be removed from the American marketplace of ideas.
"Wokeness hates beauty because beauty, like excellence, is hierarchical," writes Manhattan Institute's vice president Jesse Arm.
“Sydney Sweeney, a registered Republican, has the ‘HOTTEST’ ad out there . . . Go get ’em Sydney!” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
"The tide has seriously turned — Being WOKE is for losers, being Republican is what you want to be," Trump added.
This idea that the "tide has turned" is what really has the left panicking. Leftists' major line of attack on America and their political foes is losing its potency.
That’s because American Eagle’s ad campaign is clever, harmless, and effective. It worked. It’s a case study in what resonates in post-woke America: smart visuals, zero moralizing, and a pitch that doesn’t insult the consumer. That’s what infuriates self-appointed, left-leaning cultural gatekeepers.
As my Manhattan Institute colleague Rob Henderson has noted, the outrage is strategic. Some men call Sweeney “mid” to deflate the self-esteem of women who look like her, hoping to boost their own chances. Some women call her racist for the same reason. And the activist media class calls the ad “fascist” because they’ve trained themselves to see oppression in everything from cleavage to comedy.
"Americans are tired of being policed for what they like, for who they find attractive, for enjoying a cheeky ad without reading a political treatise into it," Arm writes. Americans are no longer going to apologize for who they are. And they certainly aren't "woke."
Sweeney fits perfectly into this "post-woke world." She doesn't make a big deal about it but refuses to become a culture warrior for either side. That, in and of itself, is a victory for anti-wokeism.
To be in the Left’s good graces, you must recite the correct slogans. If you don’t, you’re a crypto-fascist with problematic “genes.” That’s the cultural terrain Sweeney is navigating. She’s not MAGA, but she is post-woke. She refuses to enlist in the culture war. And yet her refusal is, itself, a kind of cultural act: it says you can be desirable without a disclaimer.
That’s a stark contrast to the politically active celebrities who are constantly presented as aspirational—Olivia Rodrigo, Rachel Zegler, Emily Ratajkowski. They’re talented, sure, but they package themselves in layers of performative progressivism. The implication: you’re allowed to be attractive only if you apologize first. Sweeney offers an alternative: no apologies necessary.
Along with "wokeism," the idea that it's not enough to simply believe something, you must prove it through "performative progressivism" every day, is dying. It's an exhausting way to live and was bound to die off eventually.
It's far too soon to declare the "end of woke." The radical left has been in these wars for a long time and has experienced setbacks before. Think of socialism in the early '90s, when the Soviet Union collapsed and Cuba nearly bankrupted itself. Thoroughly discredited, it was believed that the free market would never be challenged again.
In a few months, we will very likely be welcoming a radical socialist as mayor of New York. The left plays the long game better than anyone.
Sydney Sweeney was a skirmish in a long, twilight struggle for human freedom. Recognizing that is key to continuing the fight with eyes open.
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