The American Eagle Controversy: How Corporate Feminism Just Died
Let's cut the bullshit. The American Eagle controversy isn't just about bad marketing—it's about the public execution of corporate feminism while they count their money.
You've seen the Sydney Sweeney campaign by now. You know, the one where they're selling us "great jeans" and "great genes" like we're too stupid to see what they're really doing. Well, guess what? We're not. The American Eagle controversy reveals something much darker: this is corporate feminism's death, complete with a blonde firing squad and a tagline that would make 1940s eugenicists weep with joy.
This Isn't About Jeans, and We All Know It
The American Eagle controversy started when someone in their boardroom looked at their balance sheet, looked at the cultural moment, and decided that corporate feminism was bad for business. So they killed it. Publicly. With a campaign so tone-deaf it's practically a hate crime against irony.
Sydney Sweeney isn't just their model. Sweeney is their middle finger to every woman who believed corporate feminism meant something. Blonde hair, blue eyes, conventionally gorgeous, and serving up tradwife fantasy realness for an audience that's been waiting years for someone to tell them it's okay to want their women genetic perfection again.
And the timing? Chef's kiss. We're living through the systematic destruction of women's rights, democracy is hanging by a thread, and these corporate geniuses thought, "You know what this moment needs? Some light eugenics messaging wrapped in denim!"
The American Eagle controversy caused their stock to jump 16%. Because nothing says "we're the good guys" like profiting off genetic superiority messaging.
Aerie Can Go Fuck Itself
Remember Aerie? The "body positive" brand that built its entire identity on celebrating "real" women? The company that spent a decade telling us they were different, that they cared about authenticity, that they were dismantling toxic beauty standards one unretouched photo at a time?
Yeah, that Aerie. The same Aerie that's now owned by a company selling us "great genes" like it's 1938 and we're shopping for the master race.
Aerie's sales grew 20% in 2015 when they launched #AerieReal, their campaign celebrating stretch marks and soft bellies and women who looked like actual humans instead of genetic lottery winners. That campaign reached 4 billion media impressions because women were starving for brands that didn't make them feel like genetic failures.
But corporate feminism was never about us. It was about them. And the second the cultural winds shifted, they shifted with them, straight into the arms of white supremacist beauty standards and genetic determinism.
You can't spend a decade celebrating "real bodies" and then pivot to glorifying genetic superiority without admitting you were lying the whole time. Aerie didn't evolve. Aerie just stopped pretending to give a shit about the women they built their brand on.
The Tradwife Takeover Is Corporate Feminism's Death Certificate
Let's talk about what's really happening here. Sydney Sweeney isn't just a model—she's become the unofficial poster child for the tradwife movement. You know, that sanitized version of white femininity that makes conservative men feel all warm and fuzzy about "traditional values" while making everyone else feel like they're drowning in a sea of genetic inadequacy.
Social media users immediately called out the campaign's eugenic messaging, but the American Eagle controversy shows they knew exactly what they were doing. This isn't accidental dog-whistle marketing. This is a bullhorn aimed directly at people who think "great genes" is just good branding instead of literal Nazi-adjacent messaging.
Here’s the infuriating part, though: it's working. Supporters online praised Sweeney for "killing woke advertising", revealing exactly who this campaign was designed for. Not women. Not progress. Not the future. But for people who want to drag us backward into a world where your genetic makeup determines your worth, and your worth determines your visibility.
Corporate feminism died because it was never strong enough to survive contact with real money and real power. The second those boardroom executives saw a bigger profit margin in genetic superiority messaging, corporate feminism got a bullet to the head.
Follow the Money, Find the Grave
You want to know why corporate feminism had to die? Because regression sells better than progress, and the American Eagle controversy proves they figured that out before the rest of us did.
Think about it: Aerie built a billion-dollar brand on body positivity when that was profitable. But cultural moments shift, political climates change, and suddenly there's more money in selling genetic perfection than genetic diversity. So they pivoted. Not because they believe in anything. Not because they have values. But because they have shareholders.
Corporate feminism was always a house of cards built on market research and focus groups. The second those focus groups started telling them that "traditional values" and "genetic superiority" tested better than "body positivity" and "authentic representation," corporate feminism was done for.
American Eagle didn't abandon their principles. The truth is that they just never had any. They abandoned a marketing strategy that stopped being profitable.
This Is What Fascism in Stilettos Looks Like
We can't pretend this campaign exists in a vacuum. We're living through a full-scale assault on women's rights, LGBTQ+ protections, and basic human dignity. Corporate feminism's death isn't happening despite this cultural moment—it's happening because of it.
When democracy dies, corporate feminism dies with it. Because corporate feminism was never about dismantling systems of oppression—it was about making those systems more palatable, more marketable, more profitable.
The American Eagle controversy isn't just advertising, it's cultural warfare. It's a signal to everyone paying attention that the brief experiment with inclusive beauty standards is over, and we're going back to the good old days when genetic lottery winners got to represent the rest of us.
Why We Need Corporate Feminism Now More Than Ever
Before you think I'm celebrating the death of corporate feminism, let me be crystal fucking clear: we need corporate feminism more desperately than we've ever needed it. But we need it done right, not whatever performative bullshit American Eagle just served us.
Look around. Women's reproductive rights are being stripped away state by state. LGBTQ+ kids are being legislated out of existence. The wage gap is still a goddamn canyon. Sexual harassment is still treated like a networking opportunity in too many boardrooms. We're drowning in a sea of misogyny, and corporate America has the power—and the platform—to throw us a lifeline.
In a world full of make-believe, here's what real corporate feminism looks like: It's consistent. It's brave. It doesn't pivot when the political winds change or when focus groups start talking about "traditional values." Real corporate feminism means taking a stand even when it costs you money, even when it pisses off your shareholders, even when it makes you a target.
We needed Aerie to keep fighting for body positivity when the tradwife trend started gaining traction. We needed American Eagle to double down on inclusive beauty standards, not retreat into genetic superiority fantasies. We needed corporate feminism to show some goddamn backbone when democracy started crumbling around us. But the American Eagle controversy shows us exactly what we got instead: Sydney Sweeney in perfect lighting, selling us eugenics-lite with a smile.
Corporate feminism could save lives. It could change minds. It could shift entire cultural conversations if it had the courage to be more than a marketing strategy. But that requires companies to treat feminism like a core value instead of a trend they can abandon when it stops being profitable.
What Happens Now?
If I’m being serious, corporate feminism's death might be the best thing that ever happened to actual feminism. Crazy to think that? Yes. But hear me out: what if we use this death as an a wake-up call, a true reality check?
Now is the time to do this because now we know, and now we understand that we were never going to buy our way to equality, that corporate boardrooms were never going to save us, that brands selling us empowerment were just selling us products with better marketing copy.
Corporate feminism is dead may have no heart beat anymore, but I do believe that we need it back. But we need it better. We need it braver. We need it to mean something more than quarterly earnings reports and brand positioning.
American Eagle killed corporate feminism with a blonde model and a tagline about genetic superiority. But they also did us a favor: they showed us exactly who they really are, what they really believe, and how quickly they'll abandon any pretense of values when there's money to be made.
In the words of Maya Angelou, “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time,” and boy—we must believe them.
The Autopsy Report
Corporate feminism died from natural causes: exposure to capitalism. It was never going to survive contact with real power, real money, or real cultural pressure. So get this straight: the American Eagle controversy didn't kill corporate feminism—it just revealed that corporate feminism was already dead, propped up by marketing budgets and focus group data.
So what now? Now we build something real. Something that can't be killed by boardroom decisions or stock prices or cultural backlash. Something that doesn't depend on corporate benevolence or brand positioning or market research.
This atrocious form of feminism is dead. So, let's bury it properly and get back to the real work of tearing down the systems that made it necessary in the first place.
American Eagle wanted to sell us genetic superiority wrapped in denim? Fine. But they also accidentally sold us the truth: that corporate feminism was always bullshit, and we're better off without it.