By now you’ve seen the ad: A sultry and supine Sydney Sweeney zips up her denim suggestively, while saying in a voiceover, “Genes are passed down from parents to offspring, often determining traits like hair color, personality, even eye color. My genes [jeans] are blue.” Genes?! Blue eyes?! Those are cursed words. Cue the typical leftish meltdown—or so you might think. “Hitler would’ve loved this ad,” wrote one user on Threads. “Nazi propaganda,” said the blue-haired TikTokkers.
But was this just the same over-the-top, looking-too-deeply-into-things that we’ve become accustomed to over the past decade? Or were those crying “eugenics!” on to something, something of which even they were not quite aware?
Consider that a few days earlier, Vogue ran a spread of photos from the Trans+ Pride rally convened in London’s Parliament Square in the last weekend of July. In one photo, a man in a long black wig and hot pants poses seductively. Another man in full-body fishnets holds a sign reading, “Chicks have Dicks too xoxo.” Scrolling through the photos, it becomes clear that trans pride is at least as much a fashion subculture as it is a social (and medical) movement.