The recent ad campaign by American Eagle, which featured the actress Sydney Sweeney making a play on the word "jeans," is getting an enormous amount of backlash online. The ad was intended to be cheeky or provocative, but instead came across as divisive and out of touch. Mainstream media headlines about the ad range from The Guardian: "American Eagle faces backlash over ‘Sydney Sweeney has great jeans’ ad" to Fox News: "Liberal media outlets argue Sydney Sweeney ‘Good Jeans’ ad promoting ‘Whiteness,’ ‘eugenics’."

Shouldn't this be obvious by now? When companies underestimate Gen Z’s cultural fluency, moral clarity, and demographic reality, they are going to be called out. Time and time again, we see that this generation can spot tokenism, satire gone wrong, and performative allyship from miles away.

Gen Z is one of the most diverse generations in American history and the most informed. They are attuned to subtext, representation, and power dynamics, and will use the tools of digital media when they feel something........

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