U.S. fashion retailer American Eagle Outfitters wanted to make a splash with its new advertising campaign starring 27-year-old actor Sydney Sweeney . The ad blitz included “clever, even provocative language” and was “definitely going to push buttons,” the company’s chief marketing officer told trade media outlets.

It has. The question now is whether some of the public reactions the fall denim campaign produced is what American Eagle intended.

Titled “Sydney Sweeney has great jeans,” the campaign sparked a debate about race, Western beauty standards, and the backlash to “woke” American politics and culture.

Some critics saw the wordplay as a nod, either unintentional or deliberate, to eugenics, a discredited theory that held humanity could be improved through selective breeding f

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