"Get a LIFE!" Sydney Sweeney Ad: White Supremacy Or 'Ugly Girl Jealousy'?

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20:14Yeah, I hear where you're coming from. And I think that kind of strong narratives between, you know, woke left, kind of hijacking everything is part of a narrative of labeling people and not allowing nuance and context of what is actually happening here. So I'm not really interested in being inflammatory around the subject. Neither do I think that this particular campaign is a propaganda campaign for eugenics. But I am interested in thinking about the power of media and representation in our culture and what it means for somebody who engages with this ad, who doesn't look like me. And as a marketer, I know that actually it is American Eagles problem that that is a reaction of their customer base, which is younger people and particularly younger girls.

21:00And as a marketer, I know it's a responsibility of the brand to understand their audience, to understand their worldview, the way that they form their associations and connect with them, speak to them in a way that resonates. So it's absolutely...

21:14Piers Morgan:Well, let me respond to that. Today's show is brought to you by Oxford Natural, makers of the Optimum Day and Optimum Night, all-natural supplements. Thousands of Brits and Americans are already taking them with incredible results. Optimum Day is designed to boost your energy and support weight loss throughout the day. Optimum Night helps you relax and get deep, refreshing sleep. And don't just take their word for it. Here are just a few of their success stories. England football legend Michael Owen lost£40. Robbie, the face of AFTV, dropped over£100. Linda, a top Laurel Firm executive, lost£50.

21:53Piers Morgan:And Anita, an immigration lawyer, shed£60. To watch their full stories and find out more, scan the QR code on your screen or visit OxfordNatural.com slash peers. And here's the best part. Use the code peers, P-I-E-R-S, and get 70 % off your first order. Get 70 % off with the promo code peers. Let me respond to that, because from a marketing point of view, American Eagle, several years ago, A LONGER CANDIDATE, AND THE THE CANDIDATE WAS A LONGERY CAMPAIGN, FEATURING FEMALE MODELS WITH DISABILITIES AND CHRONIC ILLNESSES. ONE MODEL WAS PICTURED WEARING A COLOSTO ME BAG, ANOTHER PHOTOGRAPHED WITH HER ARM IN CRUTCHES, ONE WOMAN POSED IN HER WHEELCHAIR.

22:35Piers Morgan:AND IT DID NOTHING FOR SALES. SO FROM A MARKETING POINT OF VIEW, IT DIDN'T WORK. NOW YOU HAVE A HOT WOMAN WHO IS NONE OF THOSE THINGS, WHO IS JUST A HOT WOMAN LIKE THE OLD

22:51Piers Morgan:decline gene ads with men, topless, selling buckets of jeans. And guess what? Sales are up 30%. So you as a marketer should say, well done, American Eagle. You've stopped being ridiculously woke, you know, trying to sell to very small groups of people and ignoring the mass majority who are going to buy your jeans. And now you've gone route one using sex and femininity to sell jeans. And by the way, they don't care if she's white or black or anything else. They just care that she's hot. And Beyonce sold jeans. That was a great campaign that worked really well because she's a hot black woman. And the moment you try and read in all this other stuff, I mean, you say you don't want to be inflammatory.

23:36Piers Morgan:You literally said it was one of the most outrageously racist marketing campaigns ever. What could be more inflammatory than that? Well, let me correct you, Pierce. I said that I've seen in recent years. I'm very careful with my words. So I did not paint this picture of this being a racist ad, you know, ever. But I do think, and I think I've explained the way that representation works and the way that I see it working within this ad. Now, I would love to see the evidence for the 30 % sales spike. I personally have not seen it, neither. I have seen, you know, anyone in the marketing community share it.

24:08So I would love to see it and the source for that. However, there is a question of ethics and there is a question of ethical guardrails in marketing. I understand that in 2020 or whenever brands were responding to the cultural moment of post-2020 impulse to increase representation, diversity, et cetera. And perhaps those campaigns were not commercially successful. Now, do I think that commercial outcomes justify any kind of campaign that implies anything out there just because it drives sales? Well, no, as a marketer, I am interested in driving business results, but also thinking about the ethics of representation and what kind of messages are young girls and children, frankly, consuming when they log on to their Instagram or TikTok and keep swiping.

24:58And again, I said I take a more balanced approach to this. I do not think it was intentional propaganda, as I have already said, But I do think that there are some codes within this marketing media communications, which is a unit of media, that are concerning in the way that they are implying that good gray genes are represented by someone like Sweeney. Now, other co-panelists mentioned, if another particular model of other kind of background or maybe multiple models were featured, there's likely would not be an uproar. And that is because that kind of messaging carries cultural baggage, as I've mentioned, that is reflective of the history of racism in this country.

25:45And the way that people...

25:47Piers Morgan:Because she's... Hang on, hang on, hang on. Because she's white. Hang on. Hang on. Because she's white and got blue eyes. Is that why? because the verbal cues surrounding this terminology that carries a lot of cultural weight such as offspring gray genes are paired with these other signifiers that are very specific blue blue eyes blonde skin etc and you have to understand that this is just a reality of how our brains work we move for life and we develop these conceptual and mental mass so you don't like it Because she's white and got blue eyes. All right. Debra Lee. That is very dismissive. Hang on, hang on.

26:26Piers Morgan:Antiochal. Hang on. Hang on. We're going to go in the right order. I'm going to ask Debra Lee. Debra Lee, I mean, ultimately, we got to the real problem. She's white and got blue eyes. Since when was that a crime to use a white, blue-eyed woman who's hot and an actress to sell products? Happens all the time, as it does with black actresses. All the time. I'd say somewhere in the last five to six years the oldest marketing ploy from the beginning of time is sex sells every single person knows that and the problem with the left and everybody who was offended by this is they extrapolate it's not just this situation they hear somebody say I love being thin and they go oh so you hate fat people Sidney Sweeney saying she has good genes which there's a lot that goes into having good genes we don't know about maybe she doesn't have any history of family illness maybe she has very low visceral fat like you said peers great skin and didn't need braces.

27:17It's much more than just having blonde hair and blue eyes, okay? But to say that Sidney Sweeney has good genes means now we're saying that all these other people don't have good genes. Relax. Why do you have to always get offended by every single thing? Nobody's saying that. And let's just go back to, what was it, Abercrombie that had the shirtless models outside of all of their offices? It's the same people that are offended by the Sidney Sweeney ad that were dreaming and praying to end up with one of those shirtless models. Society has progressed too far in the sense where now every single person needs to be included.

27:45I THINK IT'S A GREAT THING TO FIND VALUE.

27:49Piers Morgan:OKAY, MARLA MONHILL, I REMEMBER A MODEL CALLED TESS HOLIDAY BEING THE COVER OF COSMOPOLITION MAGAZINE. SHE WAS 305 POUNDS AND 5 '2. AND THE WHOLE PIECE WAS ABOUT HOW INCREDIBLY EMPOWERING THIS WAS AND WHAT AN EXAMPLE OF BODY POSITIVITY IT WAS. WHEN IN FACT, IT WAS UNBELIEVABLY dangerous promotion of morbid obesity. That's what it was. Because if you're 305 pounds at five foot two, you are dangerously fat and you are more likely than not to die from the repercussions of being that size. And yet the woke left went, look at this, isn't this fantastic? And yet here you have a model who's not super slim, Sydney Sweeney.

28:34Piers Morgan:She's got a very rounded, normal body, SHE IS NOT LIKE A STICK INSECTS SUPERMODEL. SHE LOOKS HOT AND SHE IS WEARING JEANS AND SHE HAPPENS TO BE WHITE AND HAPPENS TO HAVE BLUE EYES. TO TRY AND TURN THIS INTO A RACIAL THING OR TO COMPARE IT TO THE NAZIS, EVEN BY WOKE STANDARD SEEMS TO ME RIDICULOUS. OKAY. FIRST, JUST FOR CLARITY, SIDNEY Sweeney is a size zero. So even when we say that someone is a normal size, that suggests that the average person is a size zero. The average person, the average woman in this country is not. So at all moments when we make these observations that seem neutral, we're actually assigning a value.

29:20So if I am a size eight as a woman, and you've just said on national TV as the most important, coolest, most handsome host in the history of television, if you say that it's normal to be a size zero, then yeah, when I'm a size eight, now I feel like something's wrong with my body. Similarly...

29:36Piers Morgan:So she doesn't look normal to you, Sidney Sweeney? She looks normal. 38 seconds, by the way, for interruption. Great, you're on a new record. I think she looks normal. Wow, you're really touchy today. I think, I'm just teasing you, Piers. I'm just very, very upset about the world, you know, and I need a hug from you and you're not in the studio with me. Well, there are more important things to be worried about than Sidney bloody Sweeney. Trust me. Honestly, there is literally war. There is war raging around the world. There is famine. Right? And you're getting your knickers in a massive twist about Sidney Sweeney.

30:15That's actually where I'm going, right? I mean, this conversation started with - How did you know her dress size went out her hair color? Because I just Googled it when he said it, and it comes up. Because I just typed Sidney Sweeney dress size, and it says, that Sidney Sweeney typically wears a size 23, which is equivalent to U.S. size zero. I looked it up to make an argument while he was talking. Google is amazing in that way. I had no desire to do it with the ad because it wasn't my point. As a scholar, my point was to see how the audience receives something, not how I, at a meta level, can look at it.

30:43Piers Morgan:She's not a size zero, by the way. As an admirer of the female form, she is not a size zero. Okay, so now I'd like to respond to the actual point. I concede. Whatever size she is, my point is to say any woman has a normal size, it assigns a value. And I'm not saying you're right or wrong about your value. I'm saying we're always articulating values when we say things. Putting a 300-pound woman on a cover is not in and of itself a problem. If I put a 300-pound woman on a cover and say, that's the healthy body, I'm implicitly saying that other bodies are not. And to your point, I think that might be problematic.

31:20At the beginning of this conversation, Deborah, I think your name is Deborah. Forgive me if I got your name wrong. I think you mentioned the river to the sea, right? The river to the sea is not in and of itself, those words for me are not genocidal. I know they're not genocidal, but to you, you hear it differently. Why? Because you're looking at history, you're looking at context, you're looking at intent, you're looking at action, and you're making a different judgment. Your judgment's wrong. That statement is absolutely not Gaza needs to be free. No, it's not. It comes from the literal charter.

31:51From the river to the sea, we must genocide all Jews. So, no, I'm not looking at context. I'm looking at the literal Hamas charter and what these people believe. That would be context. Okay, again, allow me to finish. I never interrupted you. The Hamas charter would be context. That's my point. You're not looking just at the words. You're looking at other pieces of evidence. That's called context. You're literally making my point. My point to you is... Because words have meaning. Words don't just mean nothing. Sorry, I'll let you ask your question. And so do... Listen to me. Words do have meaning.

32:20And the meaning isn't just about literal decoding. It's also about the meanings that are encoded into words. It's about the history. It's about other factors. And I'm telling you, the same way you're telling me as a Jewish person, there are certain words, certain images, certain tropes that impact you because of the history of anti-Semitism. I'm telling you that the same history of white supremacy that makes anti-Semitism so ugly also makes anti-black racism so ugly. I didn't tell you I was offended by this argument. You keep saying, you said get a job and stop being offended. I think we all have jobs here, and I don't think any of us are offended per se.

32:51I wasn't speaking just to you. I was speaking to the people offended by this. If you have time to sit and make TikTok videos complaining about a woman in an ad, you probably don't have bigger things to care about. Like you said, there's much bigger problems. I agree.

33:04Piers Morgan:All right, let me bring in Jedediah for the final word on this. Jedediah, it seems to me, you know, if I honestly, if I was running a marketing campaign for a big company now involved in, I don't know, leisure or beauty or fashion, whatever, I would just be deliberately goading the woke left now. in a smart, funny way. I would just do it. I would do it all the time. I would let them throw all their toys out of a stroller and then just increase sales and just laugh my head off because this censorious, puritanical bullshit is over. I've written a book called Woke is Dead, which is coming out in October.

33:41Piers Morgan:I think it'll be a massive bestseller because you know what? People are sick of it. They are sick of being told what they can laugh at, what they can admire. They're sick of being told they can't look at a beautiful white woman without being accused of being a Nazi. It's ridiculous. You are 100 % correct, and every company should do that because there is a group of woke leftists who are outraged by just about everything that sit on the sidelines, and they just wait. They wait for an opportunity, and then they jump, and they go completely insane, and the vast majority of the country does not feel that way.

34:16The vast majority of the country does not see everything through a lens of how they can be offended. They looked at the ad. They saw a young hot girl. They said, oh, she does have good genes. They laughed about it. They went and had a day. They went and had a normal day. They didn't get all rancid inside. And the bottom line is, it's so interesting to me, because these people think they're, somehow these woke leftists think they're winning. They think that by getting all riled up, they are winning the game. And they don't realize that they're constantly being... Well, you know the irony?

34:43Piers Morgan:You know the irony, Jedediah? Here's the irony. THE IRONY IS IN THEIR ATTEMPT TO PORTRAY EVERYBODY AS WHITE SUPREMACISTS, THE WOKE LEFT HAVE AN INBUILT SUPERIORITY COMPLEX. THEY THINK THEY ARE BETTER AND SUPERIOR TO EVERYBODY ELSE, RIGHT? AND IT DOESN'T MATTER WHETHER THE WOKE LEFT OR WHITE, BLACK, WHATEVER. NOT ONLY THAT. THEY HAVE AN INBUILT SUPERIORITY COMPLEX. AND NOW I'M AFRAID IT DOESN'T WORK BECAUSE WE 'VE NOW SEEN DONALD TRUMP GET RE-ELECTED BY DEFYING EVERYTHING THEY STOOD FOR. But not only that, Piers, what's important to note is that the people who created this ad were not creating a racist ad.

35:21But the people who saw racism and eugenics and Nazism in this ad, maybe they should self-examine. Why do they see everything through the lens of race? Why are they outraged by this ad with a blonde-haired, blue-eyed girl, but if you put, you know, a black girl, if you put a Spanish girl, there would be no outrage. Why is everything that they see from the perspective of jumping into outrage? No one ever argued that black, no one in the history of the West has ever argued that black people have superior genes. The Enlightenment era was built on the human that black people have superior genes. Mark, people have been saying for months.

35:53The Western aesthetics is built on the idea that black people have superior bodies. Every piece of aesthetics, of philosophy, of epistemology, every piece of Western thought and action. There has been a massive, hold on a second, there has been a massive battle in this country about obesity for the longest time. You now have the condemnation of thin people. You have the elevation of obese people. You have campaigns, Cosmopolitan magazine, magazines across the country saying fat is healthy, fat is the new skinny, all the time. No one says a peep. People in your camp do not say a peep about that because it's not on the list of things that outrages them.

36:28This annoys all the right people. This is a thin woman. It annoys the fat girl. I'm not talking about skinny, ma 'am, ma 'am. Just hear me out. I'm not talking about skinny. It's the same conversation, Mark. No, it's not. You just happen to be outraged about something different today. Today, it's about race and eugenics. Tomorrow, it's about obesity. There's always something for the woke left to be outraged about because they're always offended. They've always got their families in a bunch because they're so darn sensitive about everything. They are not representative of the public. So last word to you, Martin, otherwise you'll be reporting me.

37:00I'm not outraged, number one. And number two, I point out a history of white supremacist logics and cultures that show that white lives, white bodies, white experiences are better. and you pointed to the recent influx. This is not about history. Please let me finish. You pointed to the influx of fat people on ads as a piece of counter evidence. I'm not disputing your argument about fat people. I'm not disputing your argument about skinny people. All I'm saying is that... I know what you're saying. You said it. I'm saying, now let me say it. I'm saying that there's a history of white people being superior in terms of how we understand them in this country.

37:33So you're only mad at Sidney's way. You don't care about the good G-line. Let me ask you this question. Let me ask you another question. If a group of people had said, hey, I believe that this ad is anti-Semitic, would you have said similarly, get over yourself, stop fighting anti-Semitism everywhere? Yes. Yes. I would have said get over yourself. It's not anti-Semitic.

37:55Piers Morgan:100 % I would have done. Would you say? 100 % I would have done. We've got to leave it there. A fascinating debate. Piers, I think you're consistent and wrong on all the issues. I think you're wrong all the time, but you're consistent. So I wasn't asking, I was only asking her. Pierce, can I write the forward to that book, please? No, but you can buy a copy. You might learn something. You might learn something. I mean, I've never seen anyone who's been more outraged for half an hour and then ended up saying, by the way, I'm not remotely upset about this. I've never seen a more upset person to be not upset.

38:29I was upset about how you were engaging me. I wasn't upset about the ad. I'm actually fine with the ad. You know what, Mark? Read Woke is Dead.

38:38Piers Morgan:Read Woke is Dead and you will be a better person. You will be a better person for reading Woke is Dead. Not genetically. I will show you the promised land of a woke free life. And trust me, it is more fun out there. Right, we've got to leave it there. I don't know where you've gone. Well, you guys can read except for Palestine. It's a progressive politics, so you can find out the truth about the genocide. Good plug. Thank you. On Gaza, we probably agree about all of it. Thank you. Thank you all very much. I've been on this show 50 times. I've never plugged before. Thank you. Free them all. You're allowed to.

39:16Piers Morgan:It's fine. Piers Morgan Uncensored is proudly independent. The only boss around here is me. If you enjoy our show, we ask for only one simple thing. Hit subscribe on YouTube and follow Piers Morgan Uncensored on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. And in return, we will continue our mission to inform, irritate, and entertain. And we'll do it all for free. Independent, uncensored media has never been more critical, and we couldn't do it without you.

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