All Your Genes Are Belong to Her

I found myself grumbling crankily over liberal reactions to American Eagle's ad campaign featuring Sydney Sweeney, so here's a little more.

Another brand put out a commercial featuring a pretty actor saying “This tan? Genetics. I just got my color analysis back and guess what? Golden summer.” While susceptibility to tanning rather than burning may have a genetic component, a tan is no more genetic than a haircut, or the clothes the actor is wearing.  That's another reminder that most people don't know what "genetic" means, and shouldn't be taken seriously when they invoke it.  (Still, from a white-supremacist viewpoint, the "best" genes are the northern European ones that burn in the sun without tanning.)

But that includes inclusivity-minded liberals who think that being gay or trans is in one's genes, or that one's cultural tradition is in one's DNA, or that a man seeks the US Presidency because his DNA drives him to do it, in hopes of connecting with some hot female DNA once he's arrived. (That last one is particularly painful, since the claim comes from one of America's best liberal writers, who subscribes to a bonkers idea about what DNA does and clings to it, rather sadly, despite harsh pushback from his commenters.)

I think a similar confusion drives the liberal freakout over Sydney Sweeney.  Why not say: okay, she has good genes – so do any number of other people.  Sure, racists think that only whites and especially she has good genes. The problem is that liberals think so too: if she has good genes, no one else has them.  Remember Chris Hayes's claim, in his book on meritocracy, that once you've found the absolute best soprano in the world, there's no reason to listen to any other. Then remember A. E. Housman's comment on another classical scholar's work: "Three minutes' thought would suffice to find [that] this [is complete wackery]; but thought is irksome and three minutes is a long time."  But liberals are addicted to "Oh, how can you say such terrible things?" as the first move in public discourse; for thought is irksome and three minutes is a long time.

I've written before that people like Sweeney, far from being special, are the least common denominators of human attractiveness. They can therefore be marketed to the largest possible number of consumers.  Marketing and consumption is what they are used for - and never forget that without mass communications and the institutions of publicity and marketing, she wouldn't exist as a star.  So thousands, even millions of men, can fantasize that her smiles are for them alone, and if she was lucky enough to meet them, she'd immediately recognize their supreme value; likewise, thousands or millions of young women can fantasize about being that desirable.  On some level they all know it's just a fantasy, but it's still a rush.

If Sydney's genes are so great, though, she should be having babies - lots of babies - to perpetuate them.  She's only their temporary custodian; that's what eugenics is all about.  American Eagle's copywriters know it too: "In the ad, the blonde hair, blue-eyed actress says, 'Genes are passed down from parents to offspring, often determining traits like hair color, personality, and even eye color.'" (You didn't think she wrote her own lines, did you?)  The same is true of her appearance.  Her genes may give her a head start, but without workouts, makeup artists, and hairstylists, she wouldn't glow as much, and time's winged chariot is already bearing down on her.  Not to pick on her alone, this is a well-known problem faced by all people whose appearance is their fortune; the examples of Cher, Michael Jackson, and Madonna - not to mention Laura Loomer, Kristi Noem, and Lauren Sánchez - stand as a warning to us all.  

And while she's apparently a registered Republican, if she utters any heterodox opinions, her MAGA fan base will turn on her without mercy.  So far it doesn't seem that Sydney Sweeney is such a big star; no doubt she's hoping to parley her new notoriety into reaching a higher level.  That will have to be seen.

The Trouble with Sydney - Born That Way?

There was a kerfluffle recently over a new ad campaign for American Eagle Jeans that featured Sydney Sweeney, a young model and actress who for some reason has become MAGA's sweetheart.  Not long before, terminally online right-wing guys were drooling over pictures of her cleavage and crowing that the Woke Left doesn't like pretty white girls -- take that, libtards!  Or this.  Or something.  These were the same guys who threw tantrums because M&Ms were no longer sexy enough to please them, and complaining because liberal co-eds didn't want to date them.  (Why did they want liberal women to date them anyway?  Social media are full of "conservative" males denouncing liberal women as fat lesbians with tattoos and piercings and blue or pink hair who will never get a man; or as stuck-up hot bitches who think they're too good for a regular guy.  But this is all just the mirror image of doughy gay guys who complain that some hot guy wouldn't breed* them, and I digress.) 

The ads' slogan was "Sydney Sweeney has great jeans," with Sweeney chiming in "My jeans are blue."  Cute, but dumb - but then this is the world of advertising.  I remember amusing myself with the genes / jeans homonym as in the 70s, when I was younger and dumber though not cuter.  American Eagle had every reason to expect that the youth market would giggle and embrace the slogan and shell out for AE's not-made-in-America products. It got off to a promising start, with Donald Trump endorsing it after he was told that Sweeney is a registered Republican, and American Eagle stocks taking off.

But then things changed.  There were many complaints that the ads promoted eugenics and white privilege (Sweeney is blonde and blue-eyed), which you'd ordinarily expect would help sales.  But then sales fell off and foot traffic in American Eagle stores declined - not drastically, but noticeably.  The business press suggested that AE might want to dial it back.  Certain MAGA celebrities and media denounced the Woke Mob for discrimination against white people and the sacred Free Enterprise system, though they were happy enough when they could claim that America had rejected Gender Ideology and forced businesses to stop using trans celebrities in their marketing.  Boycotts for me but not for thee.  All very predictable.

What had surprised me, though, was the objection to "eugenics."  Everybody knows that eugenics is bad.  But liberals and progressives generally love biological determinism, invoking genes and chromosomes and DNA and evolution.  They love to claim that this or that cultural phenomenon is "in our DNA."  In its day, before the Nazis ruined it for everybody, eugenics was as popular on the left as on the right.  (See Andre Pichot's The Pure Society [Verso, 2000].)   Sydney Sweeney probably does have good genes, though that's not as much of an achievement as people think.  So do any number of non-white celebrities adored for their looks. Maybe the American Eagle ads were a handy opportunity to push back against resurgent racism in American Society, but I don't think the people who objected were thinking strategically.  

The idea that the masses should be swayed by "influencers" seems to span the political spectrum.  Toward the left end it has the form that we should be able to see images of People Who Look Like Us in the media.  They generally don't look like us, but we should be able to dream that plastic, focus-grouped celebrities are us, or at least are our friends and will inclusively accept us and give us a sense of belonging.  I agree that there should be variety in the types of people's bodies depicted in media, but it's not enough, and I don't think that mass media can be engineered to give everybody a sense of belonging.  Sometimes it's good not to belong.  Sometimes you have to stand alone against public condemnation and even feel like an outcast.  There are no easy solutions to really important problems; or sometimes a easy solution is painful in some way.  But American Eagle isn't standing on principle, it's just interested in making money, and will change its sales pitch as it finds necessary.

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* Don't get me started on the use of "breed" among gay men to refer to penetration.  At least not today.