“[Sweeney and everyone else involved] certainly know that ‘Sydney Sweeney has great jeans,’ would resonate at a time when immigrants are openly persecuted by a president who speaks regularly of bloodlines, ‘bad genes,’ and ‘cleaning out’ Gaza’s Palestinian population.” Andi Zeisler writes for Salon. Zeisler does a great job of laying out the connection between the history of Nazism, our current political climate, and why it’s not absurd to call it out when brands are overtly praising the superiority of stereotypical Eurocentric features. Felix for The New Yorker goes on to mention the talking points of those who have chided anyone who pointed out the ad as propaganda: “Can’t you handle a stupid pun, in other words? To be clear, many of us—the Negroes, the queers, the hairy feminists, et cetera, et cetera—do not react out of a feeling of personal injury, as if the blondeness-as-beauty standard has terrorized us. Whom does that standard terrorize more than white cis women, honestly? We have our own blondes, selling us fantasies.”
