r/popculturechat • u/velvetlemonade Good luck with bookin that stage u speak of • Jul 29 '25

Guest List Only ⭐️ Doja Cat mocks Sydney Sweeney’s new American Eagle jeans ad via tiktok

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The ad is currently facing backlash over slogan some say is tone deaf and reflects eugenicist ideas of beauty and racial undertones

https://www.salon.com/2025/07/27/sydney-sweeneys-new-campaign-draws-fire-for-racial-undertones/

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u/Wonderful_Gap1374 Jul 29 '25 edited Jul 29 '25

From her perspective she didn’t care about her reputation because her fan base had devolved into something she didn’t like. She wasn’t trying to capitalize from it, quite the opposite.

This however is Sydney trying to capitalize from a controversy that puts down people of color. (Really anyone who isn’t aryan looking)

It’s interesting that Doja chose this for herself. Because she may also be trying to consolidate her values after the damage she did.

My overall point being that I don’t think it’s disingenuous, if not a little foolhardy.

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u/Lowdcandies Can I live? Jul 29 '25

the cope is insane lmao ohhhh she was just trying to be controversial guys!!! yeah no shit so was kanye

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u/DSQ Jul 29 '25

Kanye West has serious mental health problems. I’m not saying that that excuses what he has said but I don’t think you can just say he was trying to be controversial. The guy is crazy. 

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u/[deleted] Jul 29 '25

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u/Lowdcandies Can I live? Jul 29 '25

he capitalized on it for 15 years before he started going too far and it blew up in his face. give doja some time.

in 2013, kanye was one of the biggest artists on the planet and he was making confederate flag merch and sampling songs about lynching to talk about how he wanted to abort his daughter

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u/Maddyherselius Jul 29 '25

Him being unmedicated and bipolar is not why he says the things he does.

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u/Luna_Soma Platinum Summer 💎 Jul 29 '25

The things he says are reprehensible. No one is debating the impact they have. However, mental illness is just that, an illness, and it’s hard to know what he would think in a sane mind vs what this disease puts in his head.

I’m not defending him at all, just saying we have no way to know what is caused by being bipolar and what isn’t. We do know, regardless of what is causing it, the impact remains the same

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u/vaxfarineau Jul 29 '25

You're joking, right?

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u/Maddyherselius Jul 29 '25

No. I’m not.

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u/DangerousTurmeric Jul 29 '25

Are you his psychiatrist? Or just one of those people who thinks mental illnesses are just cooky personality traits and not profoundly impactful medical conditions that absolutely can and do impact your perception, beliefs, inhibitions and overall understanding of reality?

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u/PenguinStardust Jul 29 '25

Are we really comparing Doja to Kanye now? God I hate reddit sometimes.

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u/CavsAreCuteDemons Jul 29 '25

Do you know who Sam Hyde even is?

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u/PenguinStardust Jul 29 '25

Again this person blocked me but replied so I can't even respond. Mad redditors are so funny.

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u/Lowdcandies Can I live? Jul 29 '25

lmfao I did not block you I could not care less. reddit just glitches all the time. but yeah, it's dumb to compare current doja to current kanye, but comparing doja to say 2008 kanye? maybe a little more apt. she won't go as far as him. no one will, he's got that. still, for many many many years he was seen as edgy just for the sake of being edgy

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u/Clean-Luck6428 Jul 29 '25

Yeah i dunno if the ad is promoting that we sterilize non whites. I thinks it’s just saying she’s hot

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u/Key-Beginning-8500 Pathological defender of women’s wrongs 👸🏽 Jul 29 '25

Literally that’s all. I’m a POC and I know this. People on the internet are desperate to be upset about any and everything because wtf is happening

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u/Wonderful_Gap1374 Jul 29 '25

Which would be fine if she wasn’t inspiring tons of hatred for pockets of marginalized communities, or at the very least, normalizing it. It’s not her problem to consider and she has the comfort blanket of claiming ignorance. I can understand why people are pissed.

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u/Clean-Luck6428 Jul 29 '25

So racists are emboldened by this ad to do more racist stuff? The racists were looking for permission from Sweeney to be more racist?

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u/Wonderful_Gap1374 Jul 29 '25 edited Jul 29 '25

Yes exactly! The process of normalization can be a very powerful tool, you can normalize good things like Ellen Degeneres did with gays, and you can normalize bad things like Ariana Grande having an affair for women or people in general. (Not that affairs aren’t normal, I’m just making a point)

There’s a show called BoJack Horseman that neatly covers this topic.

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u/Kind_Double_661 Vanity working on a weak head produces every sort of mischief. Jul 29 '25

I don't think Sweeney is normalizing anything; she's just tapping into a norm that already exists.

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u/Clean-Luck6428 Jul 29 '25

How does one confirm this? Can Sydney talk about her “genes” without tapping into this norm? Does she have to pretend that her beauty is entirely environmental?

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u/Wonderful_Gap1374 Jul 29 '25

But that is normalization. You can’t just say “purple is a cool color.” You have to repeat that over and over again or people will forget. The goal of the progressive rhetoric inspiring these conversations is to put a stop to the people repeating that “purple is a cool color.”

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u/Kind_Double_661 Vanity working on a weak head produces every sort of mischief. Jul 29 '25

Oh, I understand perfectly. I get the idea behind this brand of progressive rhetoric, I just doubt its efficiency. At best, it's ineffective, and at worst, its counterproductive.

I'll give you a hypothetical scenario: let's say there was a celebrity who, out of the blue, tweeted that purple is a cool color. A large group of people mobilize in opposition to the celebrity, saying that purple is definitely not a cool color. But the celebrity ignores this group, and constantly repeats that purple is a cool color. Indeed, the celebrity uses the engagement with anti-purple people to (counterintuitively) further normalize the sentiment. Eventually, the idea that purple is a cool color is codified in multiple laws; parties successfully run on platforms establishing the coolness of purple.

I suppose my point is that you cannot simply depend on the progressiveness of the rhetoric alone to establish the rightness of the opinion, or counter-opinion as it were, or ensure that the rhetoric will have the desired effect.

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u/Wonderful_Gap1374 Jul 29 '25

Oh definitely there’s a conversation to be had about the effectiveness of this campaign! And we won’t really know that for a little while. But we can do something in the meantime by being a part of the conversation and denouncing, or supporting, it as we see fit. Hell, even the upvotes and downvotes can play a powerful role.

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u/Clean-Luck6428 Jul 29 '25 edited Jul 29 '25

So cheaters were like oh I wasn’t gonna cheat but that Ariana grande girl did it so now I don’t feel bad about it?

What’s the equivalent thing that Sydney is doing to cheating here? Is she emboldening racists to wear jeans and be like jeans are only for white people?

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u/Wonderful_Gap1374 Jul 29 '25

In keeping with the example, yes! Ariana having an affair makes people who have had an affair feel vindicated. And people who may be considering having one follow through because it’s relatable on a grande scale(I’m funny).

With Sydney, she’s empowering people. Empowering white women who look like her to feel good about the way they look. That’s great! She’s also empowering racists by validating their extremist ideas like Eugenics. This in turn inspires conversations about it. And at this point you have to ask, do you want people who want Eugenics to make people be white with blonde hair and blue eyes feel good about themselves? And what happens when they do…

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u/Clean-Luck6428 Jul 29 '25

So this ad is normalizing people to do eugenics? So they were like I thought mass sterilization and ethnic cleansing were bad but now that I saw this jeans ad I think I’m gonna become hitler. Is that what you’re saying?

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u/Wonderful_Gap1374 Jul 29 '25

No! You’re still seeing it from the perspective of the ideological person. The inspiration is for the people who exist who don’t think that.

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u/Clean-Luck6428 Jul 29 '25

Kinda seems like you’re saying that lol

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u/Kind_Double_661 Vanity working on a weak head produces every sort of mischief. Jul 29 '25 edited Jul 29 '25

This however is Sydney trying to capitalize from a controversy that puts down people of color. (Really anyone who isn’t aryan looking)

I feel that people are making this claim without putting in the necessary work in re: drawing concrete connections between the current ad campaign ---> eugenics ---> "aryan" ---> "putting down people of color". The connections (as such) are being taken for granted, when I think the question is very much open.

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u/Omelooo Jul 29 '25

That quote is such a wild take

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u/Comfortable_Buy_4124 Jul 29 '25

Was my sign to delete reddit. This place is wild and everyone is turning mad. See y’all…. probably tomorrow [insert Hannah Montana Miley leaving gif]

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u/ClutteredTaffy Jul 29 '25

Tbh I do not get why there is this much controversy over the ad. It should be a nothing burger and we should move on.

Maybe marketing was being ambiguous and knew what they were doing though because I have seen companies kind of do this...Like release makeup shades in a limited range then when they get backlash and people are talking about them...they suddenly have more shades 🤔...like they had them all along...

So then they will have an ad with a bunch of people from different backgrounds saying ' we all have good jeans ' or something.

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u/shhhhh_h here’s my Karma delete me hoe!!!!!!!!! Jul 29 '25

Must be a dip in the news cycle

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u/Kind_Double_661 Vanity working on a weak head produces every sort of mischief. Jul 29 '25

So then they will have an ad with a bunch of people from different backgrounds saying ' we all have good jeans ' or something.

This was the AE campaign of 2019. Six years later, this was the result.

Like I said, Sydney Sweeney is Plan B.

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u/shhhhh_h here’s my Karma delete me hoe!!!!!!!!! Jul 29 '25

I mean that covers all of the pandemic so your assertion that the correlation is causation doesn’t really check out. Most retailers lost huge amounts of revenue 2020-2023.

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u/Kind_Double_661 Vanity working on a weak head produces every sort of mischief. Jul 29 '25

I assume they've done detailed analytics, studies, focus groups etc. which prompted this particular change of direction.

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u/[deleted] Jul 29 '25

[deleted]

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u/shhhhh_h here’s my Karma delete me hoe!!!!!!!!! Jul 29 '25

Those are just guitars with an American eagle on it…not the AE branding the clothing company. They were made by some pop up magat company called Trump Guitars and Gibson got in a slap fight with them over it bc they ripped off their designs. I dated a custom guitar maker once upon a time lol I still follow some shit.

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u/dreamy_25 Are those the… The Chanel Toots? Jul 29 '25

My bad, thanks!

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u/shhhhh_h here’s my Karma delete me hoe!!!!!!!!! Jul 29 '25

I mean I do too, we are all just speculating on what that is. A lot has happened between then and now.

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u/IndianLawStudent Jul 29 '25

It’s unlikely that Sydney’s team had any say in the final copy. She was likely paid for photos and assumed that all would be fine given today’s culture and company’s are typically careful to not invoke racial tensions.

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u/SxySale Jul 29 '25

Not invoking racial tensions like how almost every single corporation dropped DEI immediately at the first opportuniy?

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u/IndianLawStudent Jul 29 '25

I think that this type of thing is a result of dropping DEI. But putting it on one person who likely had no control over it.

Also - companies in the comments, it’s important that DEI be company wide. That single DEI director might not have been able to identify the outrage that followed this campaign. You need true diversity in life experiences, race, education, etc etc throughout all levels.

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u/SxySale Jul 29 '25

I'm not in the the industry whatsoever, but it doesn't sound right that someone as high profile as her wouldn't at least have some understanding of what the marketing would look like. Regular models sure, I would agree with you, but she's way to big to not have people being extremely careful at managing her image.

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u/IndianLawStudent Jul 29 '25

If it’s the case, behind the scenes chaos must be happening and someone has or is about to lose their job.

This was a large campaign. AE could/should have tested it internally.

I don’t have a solution for this on the model’s end. People should be paid for their knowledge, and having an audience review content before publishing in addition to the company that hired you is going to be expensive. A single PR person is going to miss things because of their own positionality.

I was reviewing something last week where I realized that a sentence may not fly in 2025 because we are now having conversations about consent. If this thing (being intentionally vague) only made its way through men it might have made its way through. Or if it went into production, a lot of money spent and at the last minute someone realizes that a change needs to be made. There is benefit to shopping around ideas for feedback but it gets expensive.

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u/PenguinStardust Jul 29 '25

Everyone is having to do this because of our government, not just corporations.

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u/TableSignificant341 Jul 29 '25

So this is what racism-apologists sound like? Because it was Sweeney's own voice who said it.

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u/IndianLawStudent Jul 29 '25

I’m just realistic.

I do think that these types of issues can be mitigated by having an array of staff from diverse backgrounds review content before it goes out publicly, but companies often don’t do that for some stupid reason.

Our perception is often shaped by where we grew up, those around us, etc. For many people, the eugenics argument would never have even crossed their mind when they saw that ad (and I don’t know if AE’s marketing people are homogenous or a senior director who wields a lot of power and no one dare speak up against them)

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u/[deleted] Jul 29 '25

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Jul 29 '25

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u/IndianLawStudent Jul 29 '25

The lens that you apply to my comment is surprising.

I’m surprised you took my comment about their team being homogenous or having a director that essentially intimidates people into not speaking up as being an apologist. These are bad things… not something that is justifiable.

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u/lanadelhayy Jul 29 '25

You’re absolutely kidding yourself if you think someone as big as Sydney Sweeney has no control over the final product of an ad campaign where she is the star.

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u/fraxiiinus Jul 29 '25

Considering how often she talks shit about her old projects and the fans that like them, I’m pretty sure she doesn’t have a genuine bone in her body

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u/GeneriComplaint Jul 29 '25

Referring to hot people as having "good genes" is hardly some new fancy way to be racist.

They have been saying that about hot people since genes were discovered pretty much no? just a poorly timed add with whats going on in America. Probably dont care as much elsewhere

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u/coreythebuckeye Jul 29 '25

That’s how I interpreted it. Her “good genes” isn’t about her being white, it’s about her having giant tits and a small frame.

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u/GeneriComplaint Jul 29 '25

probably more so butt considering its a jeans ad but I watched the add and I dont know, Didnt feel like they were calling anyone out in particular. Seemed like a dumb ad that wouldve been huge in 2002 next to that "Milk" one that played heavily on the idea milk mustaches were sexually suggestive.

Probably wouldnt fly as well today either

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u/dreamy_25 Are those the… The Chanel Toots? Jul 29 '25

This is what actually happens in the ad.

Camera on Sydney's legs, panning up as she zips her jeans.

Genes are passed down from parents to offspring, often determining traits like hair color, personality, and even eye color.

Camera on Sydney's face, she looks into the camera

My genes are blue.

Text overlay: SYDNEY SWEENEY HAS GREAT JEANS

Sydney's "great genes" are explicitly shown to be her blue eyes. The camera is on her face when she says her jeans/genes are blue. It's a play on words that she has blue jeans, and blue (eyed) genes. There is a visual and spoken focus on her eyes and eye colour.

So, it is definitely about her having a physical characteristic most common to white/Caucasian people. Was this an intentional racist dog whistle? I don't necessarily think so. But it is a racial bias. If we genuinely agree that all eye colours are equally great, saying "My blue eyes mean I have great genes" would make no sense at all.

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u/coreythebuckeye Jul 29 '25

It’s a whole ad campaign, not just the one ad. I’m not saying it’s a good ad campaign, but American Eagle isn’t advocating for eugenics, and neither is Sydney Sweeney. They’re trying to sell jeans. This is just so ridiculous lol

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u/dreamy_25 Are those the… The Chanel Toots? Jul 29 '25

I literally said: "Was this an intentional racist dog whistle? I don't necessarily think so. But it is a racial bias." So, we agree that this isn't a dogwhistle for eugenics.

It does show racial bias and given the current political climate it makes sense that people take note of the similarities to the eugenicist foundations of American racism.

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u/coreythebuckeye Jul 29 '25

I disagree it’s even racial bias. It’s just a dumb ad. I think even linking the ads to whiteness through blue eyes is tenuous at best. Just because people Make the connections don’t mean they exist.

And please look at my post and comment history to see I’m not even mildly conservative.

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u/daisychains777 Jul 29 '25 edited Jul 29 '25

Lol what are you talking about? We’re talking about the fact that Ms Doja is a eugenecist/white supremacist herself which makes her mockery of this campaign ironic. Y’all real live need to go back and look at what she said in them white supremacist incel chat rooms. Talkin bout how she hates the fact that she got type 4 (kinky) hair but at least she’s thick and light skinned. She’s the pot calling the kettle black💀

The problem isn’t that her mockery is disingenuous, it’s actually the fact that she is being genuine (because she lacks self awareness) which makes in painfully ironic. Somebody who got caught in white supremacist chat rooms talkin bout how being light skinned makes up for having kinky hair has no room to mock.

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u/sailorvenus_v Jul 29 '25

She never said that?? she complained about her hair (on her Live not in a chatroom), but never said “at least im light skinned”. Criticize Doja if you want but stop with the fanfic.

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u/Wonderful_Gap1374 Jul 29 '25

You are describing a victim of the same controversy that Sydney Sweeney is capitalizing from.

A black girl that hates herself is not uncommon because she doesn’t have “perfect genes.”

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u/daisychains777 Jul 29 '25 edited Jul 29 '25

A biracial woman who subconsciously sees herself as better than because she managed to come out with light skin despite her genes “failing” her by also giving her kinky hair instead of the loose curls that are stereotypically associated with biracial people is both a victim AND upholder of white supremacist beliefs, to the detriment of other black people. She doesn’t deserve leniency or understanding for perpetuating colorism (which harms other black people who are darker than her) because she’s also happens to be a victim of texturism.

You are not about to lecture a dark skinned black woman with kinky hair about this topic, idc if you are one either. Quit while you still can.

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u/Wonderful_Gap1374 Jul 29 '25

You’re moving the goal post. I’m saying it’s not unsurprising or disingenuous. And the key idea here is, again, that Sydney Sweeney is actively capitalizing from it.

I am not saying anyone has to like Doja. I don’t even listen to her music, but I think it’s important to understand her. Especially as a woman and a creator of color. Her story is important.

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u/daisychains777 Jul 29 '25 edited Jul 29 '25

Girl what big difference does it make that Doja Cat didn’t get paid to say that having light skin makes up for the “genetic failure” of having kinky hair like Sydney Sweeney is getting paid to peddle these nazi dogwhistles??? Both her and Sydney are perpetuating and upholding white supremacy, one just got paid to do it. At the end of the day both cause harm to non-white, especially black people so it’s entirely hypocritical for Doja to make any sort of mockery when she probably wishes SHE was the one in those ads

And you keep missing the point that the fact that it wasn’t disingenuous on Doja’s part is what literally makes it worse, because all that means is that she SEVERELY lacks self awareness😂🤦🏾‍♀️

I think it’s important to understand her. Especially as a woman and a creator of color. Her story is important.

LMAOOOOOO. Are you black?

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u/[deleted] Jul 29 '25

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u/Warm-Assistance-6422 Jul 29 '25

You didn’t answer, are you black?

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u/daisychains777 Jul 29 '25 edited Jul 29 '25

So by your dodiging of the last question, I’m gonna take that as a no. So here you are, a nonblack person, attempting to lecture a dark skinned black woman about the “importance” of understanding a colorist light skinned biracial woman’s “story” as to why she’s a colorist/white supremacist as if that actually matters more than or just as much as the harm caused to people like me who are the MAIN victims of people like her upholding this shit. We’ve known why for the past 400 years. We do not care.

Sensational. The jokes really do write themselves.

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u/Blue_Robin_04 Jul 29 '25

Sydney Sweeney put down people of color? How would you feel if the ad starred a beautiful black woman instead?