adminCNN spent precious column inches fretting that the “male gaze” is making a comeback, and the piece reads less like sober reporting than like a take-no-prisoners sermon against masculinity. The network frames a marketing trend as a social crisis, as if men noticing attractive women is a political act that must be explained away and regulated. This is cultural hysteria dressed up as analysis, and it betrays a media establishment desperate to keep policing ordinary life.
The article points to the American Eagle “Sydney Sweeney Has Great Jeans” campaign as evidence the male gaze is “roaring back,” but the ad in question simply sells denim by leaning into classic Hollywood glamour and sex appeal. Critics turned the campaign into a controversy about “genes” and race, while vast swaths of consumers rewarded the brand with higher engagement and sales — exactly what a capitalist market is supposed to do. If advertising that embraces beauty and desire is now framed as a political offense, the left has successfully weaponized outrage against normal human instincts.
Conservative readers should notice the rhetorical sleight-of-hand: media elites declare a harmless aesthetic “problem” and propose social remedies that always fall on the side of censorship and shaming. Awards Daily and similar outlets rightly mocked CNN’s handwringing, pointing out that the so-called “male gaze” has fueled some of cinema’s greatest icons and that the real scandal is the self-righteousness of the accusers. When respectable critics roll their eyes at CNN, it’s because the complaint is less about art and more about controlling taste.
What CNN refuses to acknowledge is that men and women both enjoy beauty, and that attractiveness has been central to art and commerce for millennia. Forcing every medium into a bland, politically sanitized monoculture doesn’t liberate women — it infantilizes them and robs audiences of entertainment that celebrates human desire. Americans should reject the idea that looking is a crime; instead we should celebrate freedom of expression and the market choices of grown adults.
Meanwhile, online reactions show the public isn’t buying the panic narrative; many people see the American Eagle ads as a welcome return to unapologetic, glamorous marketing rather than a sinister plot. Social platforms lit up with supporters who said they were tired of manufactured diversity theater and wanted brands to sell things again instead of preaching virtue. This grassroots pushback is exactly how cultural correction happens — through votes with wallets and honest speech, not through cable news lectures.
There’s a deeper motive behind pieces like CNN’s: when institutions lose cultural authority, they double down on moralizing language to shame dissenters into silence. Labeling ordinary male attraction as toxic gives gatekeepers an excuse to marginalize creators and advertisers who refuse to conform. Conservatives should call this out as the thin end of a censorship wedge, and insist on art and commerce that reflect reality, not an ideological playbook.
At the end of the day, Americans want movies that thrill, ads that sell, and a culture that doesn’t treat basic human nature like a sin. If the return of classic aesthetics makes the media establishment tremble, that’s not a crisis — it’s a sign the culture is healing from years of performative puritanism. Keep buying what you like, keep defending free expression, and don’t let cable news scolds tell you that being attracted to beauty is a political failing.
