(“Common Walls” - Sunfish Grove) 0:00

Lauren Toy 0:09

Welcome back to Playing Godcast. We are your hosts, Lauren Toy and

Rhea Singh 0:14

Rhea Singh.

Lauren Toy 0:15

Last episode, we discussed the history of Eugenics in the United States, and also looked at a specific case of coerced sterilization. If you missed it, or need a reminder, you can find that episode on our website, playinggodcast.ca.

Rhea Singh 0:34

In this episode, we're going to be taking a look at some cases of modern-day eugenics. We hope you find this episode insightful here on Playing Godcast.

(“Common Walls” - Sunfish Grove) 0:44

Lauren Toy 0:58

Welcome back, everyone. Thank you for joining us. This episode is going to be a little bit different. In the past episodes, we've been looking at history and particular cases, and this episode is going to be a little bit more of a discussion, so you'll get to hear some of our own opinions.

Rhea Singh 1:18

Throughout this series. We've mentioned that although eugenic policies may no longer be in effect, eugenic ideas remain very present in society today. But why?

Lauren Toy 1:30

I think part of the reason that eugenic ideas are still around is that eugenics has learned to rebrand itself. And so there's been a vocabulary shift from the more obvious words to more subtle framing. An example is, instead of saying "fitness," we see "choice" and "purity" to "optimization." And I think this language shift has allowed people to tap into these eugenic ideologies without realizing it, or allowing them to intentionally hide it in a way of making it seem like they're giving the freedom of choice. And you know, optimization is usually a good thing.

Rhea Singh 2:16

I agree with your point. I think people still think of eugenics as a thing of the past. In specific regard to policies like the sterilization laws or the immigration restrictions, and because policies like this are no longer in effect, people don't necessarily believe that they're still here. However, immigration policies are beginning to make a comeback, and we see eugenic ideas come up in things like science, politics and even in the media.

Lauren Toy 2:50

And in this episode, we will actually be looking at an example from each, so let's start with IVF or in-vitro fertilization.

Rhea Singh 3:02

IVF is an assisted reproductive technique that is comprised of a series of procedures that can lead to pregnancy. It's used as a treatment for infertility and can be used to prevent passing on genetic problems to a child.

Lauren Toy 3:19

During IVF, mature eggs are collected from ovaries and fertilized by sperm in a lab. This is the in vitro part. Then a procedure is done to implant one or more embryos into the uterus, where they'll develop.

Rhea Singh 3:34

Because this is done in a lab, it provides the opportunity for pre-embryonic polygenic screening, which can assess the likelihood of an embryo developing polygenic diseases such as diabetes or provide insight into certain polygenic traits such as height.

Lauren Toy 3:55

After a set of fertilized embryos are created by IVF, a sample of DNA from each can be extracted and tested. Prospective parents can then select which embryo or embryos they wish to implant based on their genetic profiles.

Rhea Singh 4:13

This technology has been amazing for families that struggle with deadly genetic diseases that are hereditary. And until recently, pre pre-implantation genetic testing of embryos was limited to severe or life-limiting, monogenic diseases such as cystic fibrosis.

Lauren Toy 4:32

But as technology advances, we've seen numerous fertility clinics offering these technologies and using a specific type of language to market their service.

Rhea Singh 4:45

Many clinics promise that genetic testing and embryo freezing can produce healthier babies or give more time. Fertility companies already rank embryos by viability and quality, and one of the earliest services IVF offered was a choice between male or female embryos. But these are only available to people who can afford it, and they cost 1000s of dollars.

Lauren Toy 5:15

In Canada and the United States, most IVF services are not covered by insurance, which means individuals have to pay out of pocket. So this means only the wealthier families can afford IVF egg freezing and genetic screening, and it reinforces another point about who is able to reproduce.

Rhea Singh 5:38

Especially in today's society, where there's a heavy emphasis on productivity, performance and competition. So these technologies and reproduction becomes another area where the people who can afford it are the "winners," and the people who can't are the "losers."

Lauren Toy 5:57

What's interesting and concerning is that this kind of ranking and selection echoes early eugenic ideas about "better" or "fitter" humans. The difference now is that it's framed as a matter of personal choice and technology rather than government policy.

Rhea Singh 6:15

Then we have to ask when these companies offer parents the ability to rank their embryos by risk factors, who determines the value of each risk and what risks are worth avoiding?

Lauren Toy 6:29

I want to clarify that IVF itself is not necessarily the issue. It's more so the ethics around genetic screening and gene editing, combined with prospective parents who want to select their children based on a certain criteria, and so we have to ask, what is that criteria, and when is it justified?

Rhea Singh 6:51

I agree, although IVF and genetic testing can be incredibly useful, I think when you combine all these things together, it can become really dangerous, and these technologies need to be used carefully. This is something we need to keep in mind. As technology evolves and gene editing becomes more advanced.

Lauren Toy 7:13

I think this is definitely something that should continue to be a conversation in the scientific community, as well as in policy and the regulation of how these technologies are used.

Rhea Singh 7:25

Speaking of policy, now we can look at some examples of eugenics appearing in politics. In his 2020 campaign, Donald Trump addressed those who were present at his Minnesota rally, stating that they have great genes.

Donald Trump 7:42

Thank God we still have Minneapolis. To right here, right here with all of you great people. This State was pioneered by men and women who braved the wilderness and the winters to build a better life for themselves and for their families. They were tough, and they were strong. You have good genes. You know that, right? You have good genes. A lot of it's about the genes, isn't it? Don't you believe the racehorse theory? You think we’re so different? You have good genes in Minnesota.

Lauren Toy 8:17

And more recently, in October of 2024, while Trump was being interviewed by Hugh Hewitt, he criticized Kamala Harris's border policies and suggested that immigrants have bad genes, saying, quote "Many of them murdered far more than one person, and they're now happily living in the United States. You know now a murderer. I believe it's in their genes. And we got a lot of bad genes in our country right now. They left. They had 425,000 people come into our country that shouldn't be here, that are criminals." Unquote.

Rhea Singh 8:56

These are only two of many cases where he said similar things, particularly directed towards immigrants.

Lauren Toy 9:05

Both of these instances are so concerning because he's a very prominent political figure. I mean, he's the current president of the United States, and he has enormous influence on the people of America and the ideas that they believe in. And in both these cases, he's putting forth ideas that sound like they come from a eugenics playbook, where he's attributing good genes to one population and bad genes to another.

Rhea Singh 9:35

I completely agree, and I think this is where it can start to get very dangerous when governments start to have and support this ideology, because it's where we see policies come about.

Lauren Toy 9:48

And if we look back in history, attaching certain traits, like being a murderer with genes, is how the eugenics movement started, because there was a belief that these undesirable traits, like criminality, were hereditary.

Rhea Singh 10:05

And it just shows that we haven't really moved away from eugenics. And while we don't see the policies that were established in the 20th century here anymore, there's different eugenic policies that have almost come to replace them. I think Trump's immigration policies have a strong resemblance and are more of a continuation, and so it just becomes this never-ending cycle.

Lauren Toy 10:32

I completely agree, because of the current immigration policies and the general attitude people have towards immigrants, even in Canada, who's to say that we won't see Sexual Sterilization policies again in the future, especially when these ideas are endorsed by a government administration? I think it goes to show how careful we need to be about these ideas, because they can snowball into something very harmful, very quickly.

Rhea Singh 11:03

And it's not only governments that can reproduce eugenic thinking, media and marketing also reinforce it in subtle ways. For our examples of eugenics in the media, we're going to be looking at an American Eagle Ad that was released this past summer, starring Sydney Sweeney.

American Eagle Advertisement 11:22

Jeans are passed down from parents to offspring, often determining traits like hair colour, personality and even eye colour. My jeans are blue. Sydney Sweeney has great jeans.

Lauren Toy 11:38

Sydney Sweeney has performed numerous different advertisements for American Eagle, promoting their jeans as part of their ad campaign. One of the more problematic and controversial issues about these advertisements is the word play on jeans, the clothing and genes, the DNA.

Rhea Singh 11:58

By the tone of the ad, it was meant to be a clever campaign to put a word play on genes, the DNA and jeans, the clothing inspired by the Brooke Shields, Calvin Klein ad, which you can see linked on our website.

Lauren Toy 12:13

The problem with this wordplay is that it echoes eugenic language, especially when you consider who they chose to promote their clothing. Sydney Sweeney is a young, white, conventionally attractive, blonde-haired, blue-eyed woman talking about how she has great jeans.

Rhea Singh 12:32

Now, if we look back in history, she would have been part of the authoritative population that was considered a "superior race. "

Lauren Toy 12:42

I think this advertisement shows that language is really important. And honestly, when I saw this advertisement, I didn't think, "Oh, that's eugenics." But I also didn't feel like I was being marketed American Eagle jeans. I felt like I was being marketed Sydney Sweeney, and they kind of just wanted to say how Sydney Sweeney had great jeans, instead of saying, You know, our jeans are really great, you should buy our jeans."

Rhea Singh 13:12

I totally agree with your point. However, when I first saw the ad, I had actually just brushed past it. I thought it was another jeans ad starring an actress that I had seen before, but I didn't know who she was. And so it wasn't until this ad started popping up in my social media feeds, such as my Instagram reels and my TikTok algorithm, that I realized, Oh, this is actually something that's being talked about. And then when I had opened up the comments, and I saw what other people were saying about this ad and their opinions about this ad, it really made me think about how problematic the language actually was.

Lauren Toy 13:54

I think it's really interesting that you mentioned brushing past the advertisement at first, because it is true, there are a lot of people who don't see it as problematic. And to them, it's just a fun ad, like it's literally just an ad to them,

Rhea Singh 14:12

Right, and when I was flipping through social media comments and people's differing opinions about the ad, it was like I was in a tennis match with people going back and forth. "Oh, it's just an ad." "No, it's not just an ad. If you actually listen to the words and the word play," and then, yeah, just people going back and forth about it.

Lauren Toy 14:36

That's a really good point about how different people were responding to the advertisement and in the comments of social media posts, debating with each other about the message that they interpreted from that advertisement.

Rhea Singh 14:50

And for me, when I was discovering the context behind the ad and what this ad was actually about, I was going into it with a new perspective and really trying to see both sides of it. But ultimately, my opinion about the ad ended up being from the ad itself and what the ad was saying, and my own experiences of how this wordplay can come across, rather than people bickering in comment sections.

Lauren Toy 15:18

Can I ask what you think of the ad?

Rhea Singh 15:20

I think it was a really poorly done campaign, and it shows that it isn't just an ad. To put it frankly, it bothered me, and it made me really disappointed, and I think part of the reason is because I used to shop at American Eagle all the time. I loved buying their jeans. Their jeans were my very first pair of jeans, and so seeing this ad makes me not want to shop there anymore, and it just seems like there was no care in how this type of language would come across.

Lauren Toy 15:53

And now that the controversy and conversation about the ad has kind of died down, we've seen how far this debate has gone. American Eagle released a statement on Instagram saying, quote "Sydney Sweeney has great jeans is and always was about the jeans, her jeans, her story. We will continue to celebrate how everyone wears their AE jeans with confidence, their way. Great jeans look great on everyone." Unquote, this post will also be on our website if you'd like to check it out yourself. But also, people from the White House were commenting on this. And I think if it were just an ad, JD Vance and Donald Trump wouldn't comment on it or be asked about it, if there wasn't some sort of political or social charge behind it.

Rhea Singh 16:45

Yeah, and I think if we go back to the context of the ad, the thing that doesn't sit right with people is the word play on genes, the DNA and jeans, the clothing. One thing that we haven't mentioned yet is that one of American Eagle's Instagram posts showed Sydney Sweeney in front of a wall that read, "Sydney Sweeney has great genes." That was spelled G E N E S, but they crossed that out and then wrote jeans, J E A N S.

Lauren Toy 17:17

It just goes back to the original point. And I mean, it's right in your face. It's basically saying Sydney Sweeney, a white woman, has great genes or great DNA.

Rhea Singh 17:29

And this echoes eugenic language they're trying to market and profit off an incredibly serious concept that has a really harmful history. To make it worse. This could have been intentionally done.

Rhea Singh 17:42

Exactly. And the controversy did give American Eagle a lot of attention, kind of the whole all press is good press idea, and I really think it minimizes the impact that eugenics have had on certain populations, and it also reinforces the typical beauty standard for women, which is something that women of colour struggle with daily. It's media like this that really reinforce a hierarchy that ranks people by their genes in phenotypic features.

Lauren Toy 18:15

To add on this, on November 4 of this year, Sydney Sweeney did an interview with GQ and was asked about the advertisement.

GQ Interviewer Katherine Stoeffel 18:24

We're sort of talking around this American Eagle ad right now, and maybe we should just talk about it. So, were you surprised by the reaction?

Sydney Sweeney 18:35

I did a gene ad? I mean, the reaction definitely was a surprise, but it was, I love jeans. All I wear are jeans. I'm literally in jeans and a T-shirt like every day of my life.

GQ Interviewer Katherine Stoeffel 18:52

Jeans are uncontroversial. Jeans are awesome.

Sydney Sweeney 18:55

Yeah, I like your jeans.

GQ Interviewer Katherine Stoeffel 18:56

You look great in your jeans. I think I know how you're gonna answer this, but I'm gonna ask anyway. I mean, the President tweeted about the jeans ad, or truth socialed about the jeans ad, and that just seems to me, uhhh, like a very crazy moment for anyone. And I wondered what that was like.

Sydney Sweeney 19:19

It was surreal.

GQ Interviewer Katherine Stoeffel 19:19

It was surreal, and it would be totally human. I would probably feel like, thankful that somebody had my back in public, you know, and conveniently, some very powerful people had my back in public. And I wondered if, if you felt that way,

Sydney Sweeney 19:41

mmm..... I don't think, I don't think that, it's not that, that feeling. Didn't I didn't have that feeling, but I wasn't thinking of it like that, like of any of it, I kind of just put my phone away.

GQ Interviewer Katherine Stoeffel 19:59

You've made a really good case for keeping your thoughts and your life separate from that work. But the risk is that, you know, there's a chance that somebody will get some idea about what you think about certain issues and feel like, I don't wanna see Christy because of that. Like, do you worry about that?

Sydney Sweeney 20:21

No, no. If somebody... if somebody is closed off because of something they read online to a powerful story like Christy, then I hope that.... I hope something else can open their eyes to being open to art and being open to learning, and I'm not gonna be affected by that.

GQ Interviewer Katherine Stoeffel 20:54

Yeah, you've come here like really willing to talk about this whole discourse that doesn't have that much to do with you, and I'm grateful for that. Did you Is there something that you want to say about the ad itself? The Sydney Sweeney has great genes? Do you have

Sydney Sweeney 21:10

The ad spoke for itself.

GQ Interviewer Katherine Stoeffel 21:10

You think the ad spoke for itself? Okay? And the criticism of the content, which was basically that, maybe specifically in this political climate, like white people shouldn't joke about genetic superiority like that, was kind of like the criticism broadly speaking. And since you are talking about this, I just wanted to give you an opportunity to talk about that specifically.

Sydney Sweeney 21:34

I think that when I have an issue that I want to speak about, people will hear.

Lauren Toy 21:41

Okay, I know she said that if she had an issue that she wanted to speak on, then people would know and she'd make a statement. But I think, I really think this was a statement, whether she realizes it or not, and it's a very loud statement about how she feels about this issue.

Rhea Singh 22:05

I agree. And for Sweeney, she mentioned that this was just a jeans ad, but I wish she had acknowledged that for a lot of people, this ad wasn't just a jeans ad; it came across as so much more between what was being said in the campaign and then how it was marketed, especially with how everyone had responded. And I think if she had acknowledged other people's opinions about it, it would have been a lot better.

Lauren Toy 22:36

I completely agree with that. And I think the way that everyone has responded, like American Eagle and Sydney Sweeney, they've refused to acknowledge their use of the word play at all, like all they can talk about in their responses is that "everyone has great clothing," or they "just did an ad," but that's not what the advertisement says, and I think it's a very privileged response. And also, like listening to this interview made me upset, and it made me angry because of the way Sydney Sweeney said, if people were closed off to learning things because they don't like her, and how she hopes that something else would make them more open to learning, like that's so condescending and tone deaf.

Rhea Singh 23:31

Yeah, that summarizes it. I'm not sure what more to say, other than the fact that I'm really taken aback and quite disappointed, and this is why it's so important to study media through the lens of eugenics, because it helps us to see that these ideologies didn't disappear. They have just been rebranded. They now show up as trends and marketing, and other things, instead of just eugenics.

Lauren Toy 24:00

And it just shows us that moving forward, we need to be extra mindful, because it's like you said, eugenics is not going to show up in the way that it used to. It's not going to be as in your face. It's going to show up in a more almost subtle and hidden way that normalizes these ideologies. And so it's up to us to know what to look for so we can call it out.

Rhea Singh 24:25

Thank you for listening to the fourth episode of Playing Godcast. We hope this episode has informed you about how eugenics is still present today and prompted you to reflect.

(“Them Highs and Lows” - Birds of Figment) 24:41

Lauren Toy 24:41

In the next episode, we will be reflecting on everything we have learned in this series by answering some reflection questions.

Rhea Singh 24:51

If you're interested and want to learn more. Our website, playinggodcast.ca, has additional resources that is p l a y i n g g o d c a s t .ca, with no spaces and all lowercase letters.

Lauren Toy 25:11

We hope you tune in for the next episode of Playing Godcast. And remember, like genes, ideas evolve, but it's up to us to decide which ones survive.

(“Them Highs and Lows” - Birds of Figment) 25:51