This week, six Black students at UNC-Chapel Hill strongly reacted to Sydney Sweeney’s latest jeans ad. Some see the commercial as nothing more than a sexualized tactic to sell denim. Others say it carries racist undertones, highlighting the harmful history of eugenics and white beauty standards.
“Get this white woman off the floor. Is this a jean commercial or a pornography?” asked Halimatou Maiga, a sophomore at UNC-Chapel Hill.
For her, the ad’s overt sexualization—featuring Sweeney lying on the floor in denim and declaring, “my jeans are blue,” felt more exploitative than persuasive.
The phrase has sparked debate due to its potential double meaning. Some critics contend that “blue jeans” closely resembles “blue genes,” which may allude to eye color, whiteness and racial hierarchies.
The 19th reported that conservative media and public officials have dismissed comparisons between the American Eagle ad and eugenics as “liberal outrage.” The outlet also reported that President Donald Trump praised Sweeney on his platform, Truth Social, after a journalist pointed out that she is a registered Republican.
Rashyia Williams, a first-year student at UNC, said, “I’m a little confused, but she said something about her jeans being blue, and how would that persuade people to buy jeans?”
Williams had not heard of the ad’s ties to eugenics but quickly made the connection.
“It makes us seem inferior by using the uncontrollables like eye color and skin color, and putting some on a pedestal,” she said.
Some students view the ad as part of a larger conversation about culture and politics.
“In today’s political climate, there is more push for the rise of conservatives,” Mikaylah Okyere-Boateng, a UNC sophomore, said. “With the defunding of DEI programs, it pushes the message of whiteness being in the media and the representation of a “typical American woman,” so it harms people of color.”
Okyere-Boateng also emphasized that the ad reinforces beauty standards that exclude Black girls.
“Ads like these present the message that beauty is supposed to be associated with specific genes,” she said. “A lot of young girls who don’t look like Sydney Sweeney see these ads.”
Jayden Pupoh, creator of the I’m All Ears podcast, said the subtext couldn’t be ignored.
“You can’t have a blonde, blue-eyed white woman talking about how great her jeans are,” Pupoh said. “Whether you mean the actual piece of clothing or not, you also know that ‘genes’, as in genetic traits, has a double meaning.”
Ron McNeal, a UNC sophomore, agreed.
“Optics are everything,” McNeal said. “Whether or not the ad was intentionally designed to come across that way, I take a lot of offense to the suggestion that blue genes are the best.”
Not all students interpreted the ad as harmful.
“It’s just an ad,” Jaylin Williams, a junior at UNC said, “it is a little sexual, but it’s just an ad.”
Still, others argued that the campaign should not be dismissed as careless.
“They wrote the script,” Amaris Iwara, a member of Carolina Women in Business, said. “They knew what words they were choosing, what kind of message they wanted to convey.”
For McNeal, the lasting effect hinges on how young people will interpret it.
“We should be careful with the messages we send, especially to the younger generations,” he said. “Kids of color shouldn’t be made to feel they don’t belong here.”
For Black students at UNC, the ad is more than a bad creative choice. It’s a reflection of a culture that still uplifts whiteness, sexualizes women, and tells people of color they don’t fit the mold.
