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Notes -
bulllllshittt.
https://instagram.com/reel/DAkHtzmIVUA/?hl=en
Here's a JC Penny ad from less than 1 year ago making the exact same 'pun'. You can't tell me that making this pun while happening to also be white is a knowing dog whistle.
https://instagram.com/reel/C2-nqvHsMi0/ Here's express doing it 1.5 years ago.
It's ok to be white. It really is ok to be white.
The whole point of that meme is on display right here. It's only a double-entendre because the left MAKES it so. 'You are not allowed to uncontroversially be white' is not an acceptable equilibrium.
I didn't.
You said you think they’re being deliberately provocative.
I can show countless examples of the fact that jeans makers make this pun on a regular basis. Your post suggests that making the pun, while also being white is deliberately provocative. Bullshit.
The picked a hot it girl, and made the same tired cliche wordplay every jeans manufacturer makes on repeat. The spotlight here is completely fabricated and it would have been removed with the same shrug this dumb line gets every other time
I will steelman that. If "intentionally provocative" implies they were doing something illicit or unsavory, (i.e., "dogwhistling white supremacy") no, they weren't. However, the current environment, the year of our lord 2025, when woke is very much not dead, I would be astonished if the marketing team did not fully anticipate that having a hot blue-eyed blonde woman talking about her "good genes" and being unapologetically sexy (in the most traditional, "conventionally attractive" as they say, way) and white, would generate Discourse.
In other words, they knew a bunch of woke critics would flip their shit exactly as they are doing. Maybe they didn't bank on quite such a strong (and profitable!) reaction, but I'll bet they were totally pricing in attacks on the pretty white lady implying that it's good to be pretty, and probably some claims that they were pushing eugenics and Nazi imagery as well. So in that sense, that they were counting on (and possibly banking on) some unhinged reactions to generate a little controversy, yes, they were being intentionally provocative.
(And the best sexy ads are provocative. The famous Brooke Shields ad generated Discourse back in the day, not because she was hot and white, but because she was fifteen. They knew what they were doing then too.)
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