I'm apologizing in advance because this post has a lot of quote marks. It feels excessive, but is a combination of some wordplay and that I can't take "woke" being used as an insult seriously.
If you have not heard, there is some controversy about a recent American Eagle jeans ad featuring Sydney Sweeney.
While conservative-leaning men had been calling her "mid" for quite a while, the tables have turned. Now that they see her as under attack by the "woke mob", Trump has called Sweeny "hot" unlike Taylor Swift (whom he is apparently still obsessed with), Vance has defended her, Watters is fantasizing about her marrying Barron, and American Eagle stock has risen.
It seems like an overreaction, but that's just how things go now.
From what I saw, the "woke" attack on Sweeney was pointing out the optics of an ad with a blonde woman talking about "jeans" but punning about "genes".
Discussion about Sweeney herself on the "woke" side at its meanest was that some people pointed out that she has been kind of marketed as lower class, taking any kind of ads without looking for prestige. They thought this could affect her career longevity but attributed it to her parents' bankruptcy. That's not really vicious, though I think it could correlate with why the right was calling her "mid" before and with her being embraced so quickly by them now.
So let's get back to that pun.
First of all, I would like to say that back in 1991 I drew a cartoon showing an approaching sperm being asked by an ovum if those were Bugle Boy jeans, spoofing an ad series that was everywhere back then. It was rejected because the editor thought it was pointless, so I submitted a much less sophisticated one about taxes and that was printed. It was at this point that I kind of understood where the literary magazine staff who took themselves too seriously in high school went next, though also that they would think I did not take them seriously enough. I digress.
As homophones that are spelled very differently with very unrelated meanings, that pun is low-hanging fruit.
Beyond the lack of originality, the real criticism was that we are in the middle of a eugenics resurgence -- to the extent that eugenics and Nazis ever went away -- and are we going to just combine "blonde" and "good genes" as a marketing tool?
The common denials you will get in cases like this is that it's not that deep; American Eagle says they were only talking about jeans, not genes.
Maybe, but part of running successful ad campaigns is having your finger on the pulse. You can take advantage of bad trends, but it is reasonable to call that out.
Remember, I just wrapped up Disability Pride Month. I focused on positive articles, but I knew some really negative stories for most of them too. For most of those people, there are other people who say their lives have no value and are gleeful imagining their deaths.
I was also writing last week about valuing people. The trend is away from that now.
The trend is away from valuing people in business and government and health care. Some of it is more in your face than others, but there is a constant bleating. If you do not make the effort to be aware and actively reject it, you may find yourself cheering and defending it, sure that it's not that big a deal.
Don't go with the flow.
ETA: A few hours after I posted this, a leftist did make a response (not to me) with a fairly stupid but yes, mean, joke about Sweeney's face. Still not a mob attack, but also not worth making. It did not clarify or edify and now the right is all going on about how fat she is.
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