By Walt Garlington, an Orthodox Christian living in Dixieland. His writings have appeared on several web sites, and he maintains a site of his own, Confiteri: A Southern Perspective.
It seems more and more to be the case with those who call themselves conservatives in the United States and the broader West that they will vigorously support a cause only to find that, in the end, their victories bring about an increase in evil rather than less.
This is playing out for everyone to see right now with the Sydney Sweeney uproar. Many on the ‘Right’ have convinced themselves that her soft porn American Eagle blue jeans commercial is delivering people from the woke virus (One podcast went so far as to claim in its title that ‘Sydney Sweeney’s Boobs Are Saving America’). There is no shortage of commentary to this effect on conservative web sites. This one from Lauren Smith at The European Conservative is typical:
Sweeney’s American Eagle campaign is the antithesis to the progressive dogma that briefly dominated the advertising industry. This is partially because Sweeney as a figure has long provoked the ire of the woke crowd. For starters, she is an unapologetically hot girl-next-door, who seemingly enjoys and plays up to male attention in a way that many actresses now shun. She’s also largely apolitical—she’s certainly no Rachel Zegler or Jennifer Lawrence, who regularly berate and lecture their own fans for having the “wrong” politics. All this makes her a target for leftists who hate beauty and fun. In 2022, they tried to cancel Sweeney for appearing to have Trump-supporting family members who she hadn’t yet publicly disavowed. And she has been turned into a sort of symbol of the Right, as men who find the conventionally attractive star beautiful are accused of being “obsessed with a toxic ideal of womanhood.”
The inescapable reality is that most of us enjoy looking at people who look like Sydney Sweeney. The numbers bear this out—polling apparently shows that around 70% of a surveyed audience liked the American Eagle ad. In fact, the collab with Sweeney saw American Eagle’s share price increase by 15%, adding around $400 million to the company’s value. By contrast, people don’t love having unnecessary diversity rammed down their throats, or having to pretend they find the objectively unattractive attractive. The week Bud Light made the disastrous decision to partner up with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney in 2023, the resulting boycott cost the company a 21% drop in sales. The week after that, sales were still down 11%. It cost them around $1 billion overall. Similarly, Jaguar’s weird, gender-bending ad did virtually nothing to entice consumers. Nor did its pivot towards electric vehicles. Sales are down by a whopping 97% in Europe since last year.
In many ways, the backlash against Sweeney and her jeans/genes is the last gasp of the old woke order. . . . In a post-Trump-reelection world, Sweeneygate feels weirdly old-fashioned and out-of-place. . . . Women are allowed to be blonde, busty, and beautiful again. Long may it last.
Another conservative writer, Dr Steve Turley, repeats a lot of those points and adds these thoughts:
Here’s the takeaway: the pendulum has swung, and it’s not swinging back. Corporate America has finally realized that pandering to 3% of the population while alienating the other 97% is bad business. The companies that succeed in 2025 and beyond will be the ones that return to basics—selling products to normal people who want to be inspired, not lectured. Sydney Sweeney didn’t just save American Eagle’s stock price; she proved that American consumers crave authentic, aspirational advertising that celebrates success, beauty, and traditional values.
It is the last words of both of these writers that are most curious and most disturbing. Pro-family, Christian groups like Focus on the Family waged a veritable crusade against Abercrombie and Fitch several years ago for dressing up their models in skimpy, suggestive clothing. But now, because we live in TrumpWorld, when women dress up in, forgive us, slutty-looking clothes, we are to celebrate that borderline pornography as ‘busty’, ‘beautiful’, and ‘traditional values’.
We can already hear the reactions so far: ‘Walt, you old prude, you need to relax a little and just celebrate a win over the woke Left.’ That’s fine; we can take the arrows. And there is a certain amount of truth in such criticism. A change in corporate advertisements away from transgender models, effeminate men, etc., is certainly welcome.
But to end one’s analysis at that point is to make a critical error. It assumes that a political/cultural victory over wokeism via the exaltation of a woman’s shapely breasts and buttocks is tantamount to ‘salvation’ for the US/West. It is not.
Mankind may be a political animal, but he is not solely that. He is also, and primarily, a spiritual being, and everything must be judged by spiritual criteria, not by the approval or disapproval of the latest popular influencer on X. That being so, what do the leaders of the Church have to say about women exploiting their beauty?
The Holy Apostle Peter couldn’t be more clear in his directions to women in his First Universal Letter (3:1-5): Don’t flaunt the physical beauty of the body but downplay it, and work instead to adorn yourselves with the spiritual beauty of the virtues –
[1] Likewise, ye wives, be in subjection to your own husbands; that, if any obey not the word, they also may without the word be won by the conversation of the wives;
[2] While they behold your chaste conversation coupled with fear.
[3] Whose adorning let it not be that outward adorning of plaiting the hair, and of wearing of gold, or of putting on of apparel;
[4] But let it be the hidden man of the heart, in that which is not corruptible, even the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, which is in the sight of God of great price.
[5] For after this manner in the old time the holy women also, who trusted in God, adorned themselves, being in subjection unto their own husbands:
The Fathers of the Orthodox Church who followed after St Peter and the other Apostles did not depart from that teaching; they merely expanded on their foundational words. Tertullian, for instance, writes in Chapters II and III of On the Apparel of Women, Book II,
You must know that in the eye of perfect, that is, Christian, modesty, (carnal) desire of one’s self (on the part of others) is not only not to be desired, but even execrated, by you: first, because the study of making personal grace (which we know to be naturally the inviter of lust) a mean of pleasing does not spring from a sound conscience: why therefore excite toward yourself that evil (passion)? why invite (that) to which you profess yourself a stranger? secondly, because we ought not to open a way to temptations, which, by their instancy, sometimes achieve (a wickedness) which God expels from them who are His; (or, ) at all events, put the spirit into a thorough tumult by (presenting) a stumbling-block (to it). . . . No enunciation of the Holy Spirit ought to be (confined) to the subject immediately in hand merely, and not applied and carried out with a view to every occasion to which its application is useful.19 Since, therefore, both our own interest and that of others is implicated in the studious pursuit of most perilous (outward) comeliness, it is time for you to know20 that not merely must the pageantry of fictitious and elaborate beauty be rejected by you; but that of even natural grace must be obliterated by concealment and negligence, as equally dangerous to the glances of (the beholder’s) eyes.
. . . Some one will say, “Why, then, if voluptuousness be shut out and chastity let in, may (we) not enjoy the praise of beauty alone, and glory in a bodily good? “Let whoever finds pleasure in “glorying in the flesh”31 see to that. To us in the first place, there is no studious pursuit of “glory,” because “glory” is the essence of exaltation. Now exaltation is incongruous for professors of humility according to God’s precepts. Secondly, if all “glory” is “vain” and insensate,32 how much more (glory) in the flesh, especially to us? For even if “glorying” is (allowable), we ought to wish our sphere of pleasing to lie in the graces33 of the Spirit, not in the flesh; because we are “suitors”34 of things spiritual. In those things wherein our sphere of labour lies, let our joy lie. From the sources whence we hope for salvation, let us cull our “glory.” Plainly, a Christian will “glory” even in the flesh; but (it will be) when it has endured laceration for Christ’s sake,35 in order that the spirit may be crowned in it, not in order that it may draw the eyes and sighs of youths after it. Thus (a thing) which, from whatever point you look at it, is in your case superfluous, you may justly disdain if you have it not, and neglect if you have. Let a holy woman, if naturally beautiful, give none so great occasion (for carnal appetite). Certainly, if even she be so, she ought not to set off (her beauty), but even to obscure it.36
Many conservatives in the West seem to have lost sight of what is most important. ‘Owning the libs’ has taken priority over salvation in Christ. We may have banished obese lingerie models from fashion runways, but we are nevertheless encouraging our daughters, sisters, etc., to dress and strut around like adulteresses.
Celebrating the immodesty of Sydney Sweeney will not save the West from her slow, agonizing death. That will only hasten it – not as quickly, to be sure, as embracing the LGBT cult would; but it will still hasten death, not bring life. For there is only One Who saves, Jesus Christ, through His Holy Orthodox Church, together with the Father and the Holy Spirit. Which of our conservative commentators will have the courage to proclaim that Truth?
S.Sweeney apparntly has a new commercial coming out sponsoring Baskin Robbins, one would assume it to be less risqué given the product.
Th dynamic of the sexualised fem fatale and the admiring red-blooded America male has been going on in this country albeit at increasing levels of vulgarity since the WWII pin up girls. As of 2019 when I left military service, the armed forces had trainings to curtail increasing levls of sexual harrassmnt and assault, but continud to sell hard core porn at exchange stores—lust sells.
all advertising / marketing in the modern age is psychologically manipulative and propagandistic as a matter of course. by claiming this American Eagle-Sydney Sweeney ad campaign as a culture war victory, all the so-called “conservatives” and “traditionalists” are merely admitting that they are operating within the dialectic, not outside of it, or even in awareness of it.
After the WWII, under the Bernays influence, American psyche, like a sample of the standard human mind, has been studied by most of the prestigious universities. The corporations use that knowledge, being the main influencers in a decadent society. Unfortunately, the immoral business model has been exported to many other countries. It is unstoppable because it prays on the basic instincts of the human mind and historically on the male’s mind.
At this point in time, due to the informational revolution, like Pinocchio going to the Pleasure Island, both male and female psyche are affected. The increase in value for the shares of these corporation comes from both vintage points. Any society, without an impeccable leader, has gone past the point of no return.
I made this exact point on X and was taken to task in the comments by ostensible allies. They didn’t like me calling the advertisement “vile”. See the comments…
https://x.com/gcdugas/status/1949921924521611333
Thank you for sharing this. We are all going to take some hits from people that should be our “allies”. The truth is that we are so used to swimming in sewage, that many of us don’t even notice anymore.
I’m in South Carolina. Where in Dixie are you? I’m a confirmed Presbyterian but I met some ROCOR people at a book signing in the big Confederate store (Dixie Republic) in Travelers Rest, SC about two years ago although I’m 4.5 hours from there in Hilton Head, the yankee part of the State.