An Obvious Distraction

[DISCLAIMER]

On June 18, 2025, I posted a blog entry entitled You’ll Come Around. Regarding the photo used for the post, I wore an American Eagle Outfitters (“AE”) hat that I often sported when serving a diplomatic mission in South America between 1999 and 2001.

Simply stated, I enjoyed apparel from AE. Moreover, for the uninformed reader, I’m biracial. My dad is black and my late mom was white. Subjectively speaking, my affinity for AE attire had nothing to do with race or ethnicity. To imply otherwise is absurd.

A month after posting that photo in which I wore AE merchandise, actress and producer Sydney Sweeney was featured in an AE marketing campaign promoted as “Sydney Sweeney Has Great Jeans”. The clever rage-baiting ad utilized a double entendre.

For context, one source states, “In internet slang, rage-baiting (also rage-farming) is the manipulative tactic of eliciting outrage with the goal of increasing internet traffic, online engagement, revenue and support.” Some rage farms yield more crops than others.

A secondary source states, “A double entendre (plural double entendres) is a figure of speech or a particular way of wording that is devised to have a double meaning, one of which is typically obvious, and the other often conveys a message that would be too socially unacceptable, or offensive to state directly.”

The Sweeney ad referred to the celebrity having “great jeans” (pants usually made of denim or jean) while also seeming to infer that she has superior genes (a specific sequence of nucleotides in DNA or RNA related to inheritance of one or more traits pertaining to genetic material).

According to one source, “Genes are passed down from parents to offspring, often determining traits like hair color, personality, and even eye color,’ Sweeney says in the ad. ‘My jeans are blue.” The rage-farmed crops yielded from the AE ad have fed the nation ever since.

Practicing Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT) in my personal time, I then watched the self-disturbed outrage of a relatively significant number of people as they openly voiced their irrational beliefs regarding the matter. As an example, one source reports:

Conservative media and public officials have dismissed the comparisons between the American Eagle ad and eugenics as “liberal outrage” and have issued supportive statements.

On Monday [8/4/2025] Trump entered the chat to praise Sweeney on his social media platform Truth Social after a journalist notified him that Sweeney is a registered Republican, according to reporting from BuzzFeed.

“Sydney Sweeney, a registered Republican, has the ‘HOTTEST’ ad out there,” Trump wrote. “It’s for American Eagle, and the jeans are ‘flying off the shelves.’ Go get ‘em Sydney!”

I see “liberal outrage” from the outlook of REBT that uses the ABC model to illustrate that when an undesirable Action occurs and one Believes an unhelpful narrative about the event, it’s one’s unfavorable assumption, not the occurrence itself, that causes an unpleasant Consequence.

As an example, a liberal-minded individual views the Sweeney ad (Action) and Believes, “It’s awful that Sydney’s promoting eugenic gene superiority, because she absolutely should know better than to do such a thing,” as the person then experiences anger (Consequence).

Addressing how people upset themselves with unhelpful attitudes, the ABC model incorporates Disputation of unproductive assumptions in order to explore Effective new beliefs. The process of challenging personal philosophies of life can take longer than I care to demonstrate herein.

Thus, in the interest of time, imagine that after a period of rigorous Disputation the liberal-minded person eventually used the Effective new belief, “Although Sydney Sweeney preferably shouldn’t support what I consider a eugenicist position; I have no right to not be offended.”

In this way, the ABC model affords one to the ability to un-disturb a self-disturbed disposition. When further contemplating this matter, I think of a time when I lived in Rio de Janeiro, Brasil when assigned to a mission for protection of the United States (U.S.) consulate.

In the above photo, the girlfriend of a fellow Marine (pictured on my left) and her cousin devised a distraction (an object or plan that directs one’s attention away from something else) to remove my AE hat. Speaking Brasilian Portuguese, the cousin asked the English term for “bald.”

Unfamiliar with the word, I asked the Marine girlfriend what it meant. As my head was turned toward her, the cousin promptly removed my hat, both individuals then felt my shorn head, and another person took the photo as my head was then turned toward the cousin who wore my hat.

The expression on my face represents my thought at the time, “Oh, I see what you did there.” Everyone present laughed shortly after the photo was taken, because the distraction wasn’t obvious to me. “Okay, Deric,” you may be thinking, “how’s this anecdote relate to Sweeney?”

Personally, the Sweeney and AE debacle serves as an obvious distraction from President of the U.S. Donald Trump’s mishandling of the Jeffrey Epstein matter. Presumably intentional on some level, the eugenics argument serves as a momentary interruption in a growing demand for justice.

Fortunately, not all U.S. citizens are duped by what I suspect is an obvious distraction. I’m among that cohort of individuals, as there are far more urgent matters which are worthy of my attention than to fall for rage-baiting ploys. Release the Epstein files (not the explicit material).

If you’re looking for a provider who tries to work to help understand how thinking impacts physical, mental, emotional, and behavioral elements of your life—helping you to sharpen your critical thinking skills, I invite you to reach out today by using the contact widget on my website.

As a psychotherapist, I’m pleased to try to help people with an assortment of issues ranging from anger (hostility, rage, and aggression) to relational issues, adjustment matters, trauma experience, justice involvement, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, anxiety and depression, and other mood or personality-related matters.

At Hollings Therapy, LLC, serving all of Texas, I aim to treat clients with dignity and respect while offering a multi-lensed approach to the practice of psychotherapy and life coaching. My mission includes: Prioritizing the cognitive and emotive needs of clients, an overall reduction in client suffering, and supporting sustainable growth for the clients I serve. Rather than simply trying to help you to feel better, I want to try to help you get better!

Deric Hollings, LPC, LCSW

References:

AE Investor Relations. (2024, July 23). Sydney Sweeney has great (American Eagle) jeans. AEO Management Company. Retrieved from https://investors.ae.com/press-releases/news-details/2025/Sydney-Sweeney-Has-Great-American-Eagle-Jeans/default.aspx

Hollings, D. (2024, July 9). Absolutistic should beliefs. Hollings Therapy, LLC. Retrieved from https://www.hollingstherapy.com/post/absolutistic-should-beliefs

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Spector, D. (2025, August 5). Sydney Sweeney ‘jeans’ ad signals major cultural turning point, industry experts say. FOX News. Retrieved from https://www.foxnews.com/media/sydney-sweeney-jeans-ad-signals-major-cultural-turning-point-industry-experts-say

Wikipedia. (n.d.). American Eagle Outfitters. Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Eagle_Outfitters

Wikipedia. (n.d.). Donald Trump. Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump

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Wikipedia. (n.d.). Jeffrey Epstein. Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Epstein

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Wikipedia. (n.d.). Sydney Sweeney. Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sydney_Sweeney