The revealing ink blot

The Rorschach ink blot is a curious thing. A random, meaningless shape, it has no significance in itself. Instead, it acts as a prompt or catalyst to draw out and reveal the obsessions and fixations of the viewer who is asked to interpret it. The interpretations are useful in psychotherapy to diagnose any mental pathologies of the patient.

The Rorschach test also serves as a useful analogy when considering the reactions to the American Eagle ads featuring hot actress Sydney Sweeney modeling the company’s blue jeans and making a wordplay with the homonyms “jeans” and “genes.” The terms are used interchangeably to indicate that her sexy looks are attributable to both her “genes” and her “jeans.”

The ad received a lot of different interpretations, typically revealing a fixation on either race, body type, or feminism. Some saw it as “objectifying women,” a long-standing feminist theme. The “body positive” and DEI advocates lamented the absence of fat, plain, older, and minority women and found that the ad presented pretty, thin, young, buxom, and blond women as the desirable ideal.

But what was truly depressing was how quickly the discussion went to race and the Nazis, merely by the use of the “genes/jeans” pun, which supposedly “promoted eugenics,” “white supremacy,” and “pushed Aryan race Nazi propaganda,” even though neither race nor eugenics are ever mentioned. Yikes!

The term “genes” seems to have triggered some. Genes and genetics are, of course, central to our understanding of evolution and natural selection, an area that “science-based” liberals always bring up when distinguishing themselves from religious conservatives and their creationist beliefs. But here liberals seem to reject any possible continuing role that genetics may play in human development, apparently believing that human evolution is now frozen, with themselves occupying the highest point of human development possible. The idea that some people might naturally enjoy and pass on “better genes” than others is anathema to them, and they see a sinister agenda.

Of course, many men take a longer evolutionary view, noting that currently popular super-celebrities like J.Lo, Beyoncé, and Kim Kardashian are not only graced with large, gravity-defying breasts and buttocks, and plump lips, but seem to have inspired countless other women to emulate them in this look. Evolutionarily, this probably predicts a future population boom of buxom, swollen-lipped women with big butts, since those features seem to bestow a reproductive advantage when interacting with us shallow males. But I digress.

The reaction to the ad was prompt. In relatively restrained tones, Today declared “For some, the campaign’s actual messaging about genes upholds outdated and harmful standards of beauty and even promotes eugenic ideals.” Other commenters, their faces undoubtedly contorted in a rictus of insane rage and hatred, were less controlled, with Hannah Holland of MSNBC screeching that the ad represented an “unbridled cultural shift towards whiteness, conservatism, and capitalist exploitation.” Shalini Shankar, a “cultural linguistic anthropologist” at Northwest University, observed, “American Eagle, I guess, wants to rebrand itself for a particular kind of white privileged American.” They were able to read quite a bit into a commercial for jeans.

When it was discovered that Sydney Sweeney was a registered Republican, leftist outrage went up another notch or two.

Republicans, predictably, saw things differently and, never shy about “owning” the liberals, weren’t hesitant to mock the shrill interpretations of the left. Trump, after learning of Sweeney’s Republican credentials, weighed in to admire Sweeney and to make fun of the lefties who just don’t appreciate beautiful women. Conservatives, such as Paul Burke in The Spectator, found a growing public rejection of cancel culture and proclaimed the “death of woke,” observing that “a miserable movement is in its death throes.” Others gleefully celebrated the demise of a twisted form of “inclusiveness,” which required that we reject attractive people.

A few weary voices on the left bemoaned the fact that the reactions of a few progressive wack jobs were, as usual, making all of them look crazy, and that they were being showcased and exploited by conservatives to demonstrate how humorless and bitterly twisted the left really is.

Less political observers saw yet another contrived commercial stunt designed to get people talking about their product but recognized that fighting the hucksters of the fashion world is a Sisyphean undertaking, and probably futile.

So, what did this “test” reveal? Predictably, each of the “patients” saw something different in this “ink blot.” The hard left saw further confirmation that American business and society is, like everything that annoys them, “racist,” “misogynist,” and “morally corrupt.” In turn, conservatives found further confirmation that leftists are a bunch of hysterical, humorless loons, spring-loaded to go off at pretty much anything.

My take? It’s just an inkblot. Δ

John Donegan is a retired attorney in Pismo Beach, who the DSM-5 is still trying to classify. Send a response for publication to letters@newtimesslo.com.

This article appears in Aug 28 – Sep 7, 2025.