“Give Me Sydney Sweeney Or Give Me Death”

Submitted by QTR’s Fringe Finance

“Give me Sydney Sweeney’s tits or give me death!”

Those were the words of Patrick Henry to the Second Virginia Convention on March 23, 1775.

Well, not those words exactly. But trust me, they’re very, very close. And the point was the same: liberty is great. And liberty means freedom. And freedom means unapologetic tits in clothing ads. It’s all we had before the internet existed. It’s what we stormed the beaches at Normandy for. It’s what John Lennon died for.

As you probably know by now, the devastatingly captivating Sydney Sweeney American Eagle ad campaign hit the internet last week, and within hours the usual “woke” outrage factory clocked in for their shift (before immediately threatening to unionize and walking out).

“Intellectual” critiques of the Sweeney campaign started sprouting like weeds: “Is this the death of body positivity?” “Why is American Eagle glorifying beauty standards from… all of human history?”

The gist of the complaints? Bullshit like this.

Which is to say, the key critique is: Sydney Sweeney is a four alarm, weapons-grade smoke show in jeans and a tank top, which apparently constitutes some type of personal attack on anyone who isn’t.

Twitter threads unspooled at record pace, TikTok “activists” relived their high school theater days and offered up monologues about “toxic hotness,” the term “Nazi” got tossed around a lot and somewhere, a marketing intern at American Eagle hopefully realized they’d just won the free publicity lottery.

This (non) “controversy” occurred because somewhere along the path of inverting the common sense poles the last decade, being good-looking got treated like a moral failing. For a the better part of a decade now, the cultural mood has suggested that if you are attractive, you needed to apologize for it, dim your light, or strategically post blurry selfies in the name of “relatability.” Instead, people of a different size were celebrated…

…which is perfectly fine. All people should be celebrated. My body doesn’t look like Cristiano Ronaldo’s by any means. But it just so happens that now the advertising pendulum is swinging back to the classic model again.

This is why I think Sweeney’s American Eagle ad campaign will withstand the whining hall monitors railing against it and persevere as a reminder that it’s okay to be jaw-dropping again. The world isn’t collapsing into itself because someone looks good in denim, for fuck’s sake.

In fact, now that I think about it, it’s probably benefitting from it.

Let’s be honest: civilization runs on sexy women. It’s the reason almost all men do anything, every day. And whether it’s Hollywood premieres, fashion campaigns, or that coworker who mysteriously gets every meeting greenlit, attractiveness has always been a form of currency since the beginning of humankind. It’s nature.

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The global economy doesn’t literally list “smoke show energy” as a sector, but scroll through any ad campaign, entertainment lineup, or luxury brand launch and tell me it’s not a major driver of engagement—and revenue.

In fact, a large chunk of pop culture, consumer spending, and general human motivation traces back to beauty, charisma, and presence.

You don’t have to like it, but it’s reality. Sydney Sweeney isn’t upending the moral fabric of society—she’s just participating in the same timeless truth: being captivating…well, captivates people. And honestly? After the last 10 years, it’s kind of nice to see the pendulum swing back to unapologetic glamour.

The people complaining might want to take a step back and read the room—and also the 2024 electoral map. The culture-warrior crowd who scold brands for celebrating someone being attractive just watched their broader worldview take a historic L at the ballot box.

That kind of loss doesn’t just happen because of “messaging.” It happens because the public is tired of being told what they’re allowed to like. And most us of like this:

Democratic party approval ratings just hit all time lows because of this type of nonsense. You can blame policy, you can blame strategy, or—you could just admit—lecturing people about what’s “problematic” in a denim ad isn’t exactly a way to show the world you have your priorities in order.

If the outrage brigade is serious about making a comeback, they’ll have to rediscover the lost art of meeting the public where it actually is. And spoiler: the public isn’t calling for a tribunal on Sydney Sweeney’s waist-to-hip ratio. And the average voter, with the attention span of a garden gnome, is far more likely to remember the above photo than a 1,200-word op-ed about why a commercial made some snowflake feel “excluded.”

So, here’s some unsolicited political advice: if you want the Primrose path back to voter approval, maybe stop turning harmless cultural moments into battlefields when the world has real problems to deal with. Hey Democrats and op-ed writers who wear those tiny colored spectacles! FYI: Sydney Sweeney’s ad isn’t a crisis—it’s an opportunity. Embrace the tits, they will lead the Democrats back to the promised land — because they are, in fact, the promised land.

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