Selling Jeans
The American Eagle clothing company is in a tough spot. Selling blue jeans in the United States is an incredibly competitive market. Think about it; every kind of “jeans” has its niche. Levi’s is still “the king”, but if you’re “a little bit country”, you’re probably wearing Wranglers or Carhartt. But LL Bean and, my favorite, Land’s End have the “boomer market” (they make a short/fat pair for me – Grandpa jeans I guess!!). And the incredibly competitive youth market requires pre-shredded jeans that fit skin-tight, but still are comfortable. And while American Eagle had a great run as a hands-on retailer at the shopping mall, the world (including me) buys online now. It’s been a while for almost anyone to say: “I went to the Mall today”.
Now Amazon will send you jeans to try on, some “name brands”, some made by companies whose names are an unpronounceable series of consonants. Amazon can dress you inside and out, developing your “style and theme”, and you can send the rest back. So, wearing American Eagle is no longer a stand-alone fashion statement.
Ad Campaign
The corporate answer: let’s get a young movie star to model our jeans. Sydney Sweeney was the “answer” to American Eagle’s prayers. She’s a “star” in the “target” age group: twenty-seven with twenty-four films already to her credit. But she’s best known for her roles in streaming television, including “The Handmaid’s Tale” and “White Lotus”. To point out the obvious, it really doesn’t matter that I haven’t heard of her or any of her movies or TV shows. American Eagle isn’t trying to sell jeans to me.
And the marketing department came up with a “catch-phrase” that would summarize the whole campaign: “Sydney Sweeney has great jeans!!” And in one of the actual ads, they had Sydney use the following line:
“Genes are passed down from parents to offspring, often determining traits like hair color, personality and even eye color.” As the camera slowly pans upward and she turns her eyes toward the viewer, and Sweeney concludes, “My jeans are blue.”
Jeans or Genes
It’s cute. It’s genetics mixed with fashionable clothing. And it means nothing about “racism” or “eugenics”. (For those who only vaguely remember reading Brave New World in high school, eugenics is the science of trying to breed humans to enhance or remove certain traits). But in our hyper-political world, some jumped on both the dialog, and the sexuality of the blonde twenty-seven year old. It’s “promoting” Caucasian, blue eyed-blonde GENES!! It was, believe it, about a beautiful young woman, using her beauty to sell you jeans!! And, and, it was kind of like an ad made by Brooke Shields (when she was fifteen) back in the day – sexualizing a child!!
Look, I’m as “woke” as the next Liberal, but this seems like, what my Mother would have called “A tempest in a teapot”. The American Eagle writers were “cute”, using genes and jeans interchangeably. They found a grown, adult, woman to model them (not a fifteen year-old child). And, damn straight they sexualized the product. I buy jeans for fit and comfort. My neighbors buy jeans that they wear to the rodeo (though the TV series Yellowstone featured mostly Levi’s). But the “target” age-group, adolescent to young adult, buy jeans to “look good”.
Who are they trying to “look good” for (That’s a trap)? Whoever they want to attract of whatever gender they are attracted to (that’s the way out)!!
‘Merica
Look, we live in a Nation where unidentifiable men round up folks of color in the streets. In the US today, there are “detention sites” where folks are held without charges, in horrible conditions, and without access to courts or legal assistance. After the passage of Trump’s “big, beautiful bill”, millions of Americans will lose their health care. And we are seeing the rise of Christian Nationalism mixed with Government support altering the public education systems.
Freedom of speech is being restricted, folks are supposed to “stay small” so that they aren’t “in trouble”, and Americans are “being careful” about who they talk to about the future of our Nation.
Do you think it’s a big deal that a beautiful woman is wearing a pair of jeans in an ad? Should we really spend time, write essays (even this one), take up pages of Google citations, simply because American Eagle was “too cute”?
We’ve got way bigger problems than that. We’ve got a Nation to save. And it really doesn’t matter what pair of jeans you’re wearing to do it.
