Hot off a gig where she was selling a bar of “morning wood” soap containing her used bathwater, the actor Sydney Sweeney is making headlines for another dubious advert. This one is for American Eagle and the campaign line idea is that Sweeney, clad in denim, has great jeans. Get it?

An apparel company employing a zeitgeisty actor and exploiting an obvious genes/jeans pun to flog denim would not normally be noteworthy. But the ad has sparked an intense online discussion, one which has now bubbled up to the White House, about whether having a blond-haired, blue-eyed actor – who happens to keep pretty quiet about politics – talking about her great genes is a racist dog-whistle and nod to eugenics.

The supporting evidence for this is a campaign video (which appears to have been removed after backlash) in which Sweeney, looking at the camera suggestively, says: “My body’s composition is determined by my genes.” There’s then a little joke about the cameraperson looking at her breasts before she continues: “Genes are passed down from parents to offspring, often determining traits like hair color, personality, and even eye color … My jeans are blue.”

In a TikTok reaction video with almost 300,000 likes, one influencer accuses the Euphoria actor of ignoring the current political climate. “It’s literally giving, I don’t know if I should say this, Nazi propaganda,” the TikToker........

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