When I was a teenager in high school in the early 2000s, we—like every generation—had our cliques. Larger cliques centered around race, culture, or socioeconomic level, which then diluted into smaller ones based on mutual interests, clubs, or sports.
I remember walking through my school every day and seeing the same people with the same people, seated in the same spots, wearing almost the exact same clothes. It varied by the time of day—morning bell, lunch, and afternoon pickup—but what revealed someone’s clique most clearly was how they were dressed.
Rarely, if ever, did someone in urban attire sit with the Birkenstock kids. Like a seal smoking a joint—I’m not saying it never happened, you just didn’t see it often. You certainly didn’t see someone flipping between American Eagle and FUBU.
I remember one girl in particular—Ashleigh. Shoulder-length blonde hair, blue eyes, bright white teeth, C cups, cute figure, and where did she shop? If you guessed American Eagle, you’d be right. Shirt and jeans with gray Birkenstocks. That was her look, and it fit.
So when Sydney Sweeney appeared in an American Eagle campaign and people started losing their minds, calling it a “return to whiteness," I had to pause. Are we serious? Are we really that far gone that a brand understanding its own customer base is now a crisis?
Whether these meltdowns are sincere or staged by what I call digital serfs—people enslaved to platforms for clout and coin—they’re embarrassing, and more than that, they’re telling!
It shows either our histrionic addiction to outrage or a stunning lack of basic critical thought; possibly both. To claim that a white actress modeling for a brand that has always catered to white suburban girls is a threat, a regression, or a form of exclusion is arrested development in its purest form. Neither I nor any of my other black friends shop at American Eagle, and none of us were offended that we weren't "represented" in an ad for clothing that we don't purchase. Why?
Because not everything is about us. Not every brand is for everyone. Not every campaign is a social movement. Sometimes, it’s just back-to-school marketing.
If that rattles your entire sense of identity, then yes—someone should investigate just how deep your insecurity goes.
💙 Chris
