Declaring that an actor has great jeans should technically be a boring way to sell denim. And yet, an American Eagle ad featuring Euphoria star Sydney Sweeney and some poorly conceived wordplay has broken everyone’s brains.

Last week, the mall brand unveiled a series of ads featuring Sweeney sporting their fall collection. One video shows her filming herself on the floor with a dog; another depicts her fixing the engine of a car. All of them end with a booming, male voice declaring “Sydney Sweeney has great jeans,” with the copy displayed in large font.

The spots that caught the internet’s ire are arguably the most provocative, each an obvious riff on Brooke Shields’ infamous 1980 Calvin Klein commercial, in which the then-15-year-old actor recites facts about genetics (“certain genes may…fade away,” Shields notes) while posing in the company’s denim. The Sweeney ad plays on the same jeans/genes pun, but in a much clumsier fashion and in a very complicated cultural landscape.

“My body’s composition is determined by my genes,” Sweeney starts in one video that’s since been deleted from American Eagle’s social media. The camera starts to zoom in on her chest before she lightly scolds the operator. “Hey, eyes up here.” In another, she says, “Genes are passed down from parents to offspring, often determining traits like hair color, personality, and even eye color.” The camera pans to Sweeney’s eyes, and she says, “My jeans are blue.”

The same pun is used in a poster that reads “Sydney Sweeney has great jeans” with the word “genes” crossed out above it. It immediately raised questions about the language of the ad, as well as its blonde-haired, blue-eyed messenger: Are we supposed to want pants or Aryan features?

Sydney Sweeney’s American Eagle campaign is receiving criticism for a “jeans/genes” pun that some say echoes eugenics and white supremacy rhetoric.

Right-wing voices are celebrating the ad as a pushback against “wokeness.” pic.twitter.com/Q6LkOoAqbi

In its most innocent interpretation, it reads as passe in its use of a “conventionally attractive” spokesmodel. Many, however, have deemed the American Eagle ads a racist dog whistle, some even calling it Nazi propaganda. Meanwhile, voices on the

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