A new Dunkin’ Donuts ad has people on social media in a furor over “genetics” for the second time this week.
The breakfast food franchise released a short spot for its new summer Refresher drinks on Tuesday featuring “The Summer I Turned Pretty” star Gavin Casalegno. During the 35-second ad, the actor credited his summer tan to his “genetics.”
“Why are ads so obsessed with genetics all of a sudden,” one user commented on the ad on TikTok, getting nearly 28,000 likes for the post.
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In the ad, Casalegno sat near a swimming pool holding his Dunkin’ Golden Hour Refresher beverage while he referenced his pop culture status as the “king of summer” along with his tan.
“Look, I didn’t ask to be the king of summer. It just kind of happened,” he said. “This tan? Genetics. I just got my color analysis back. Guess what? Golden Summer. Literally.”
He sat down on a pool chair, adding, “I can’t help it. Every time I drink a Dunkin’ Golden Hour Refresher, it’s like the sun just finds me. So if sipping these refreshers makes me the King of Summer, guilty as charged.”
TikTok users hammered the spot on the platform, taking issue with Casalegno mentioning his genetics.
One user asked, “Genuinely what does a drink have to do with genetics ???”
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Another wrote, “What’s up with ads and the word genetics rn.” That comment received over 40,000 likes.
A user named “Haven” asked, “WHATS UP WITH GENES AND GENETICS,” and others vowed to boycott the company.
“I’ll never have Dunkin’ Donuts again,” one declared, while another said, “I guess Dunkin just joined the boycott list with Starbucks.”
Many of the comments referred to the recent American Eagle ad campaign featuring actress Sydney Sweeney that caused controversy on social media and among traditional media outlets over the weekend with its “Sydney Sweeney Has Great Jeans” tagline.
The line’s double meaning about both the actress’ pants and looks – the latter inherited from her parents – had liberal critics questioning whether American Eagle was promoting “Whiteness” or “eugenics.”
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“The advertisement, the choice of Sweeney as the sole face in it and the internet’s reaction reflect an unbridled cultural shift toward Whiteness, conservatism and capitalist exploitation. Sweeney is both a symptom and a participant,” MSNBC producer Hanna Holland wrote in an MSNBC.com column on Monday.
On ABC’s “GMA First Look” Tuesday, the show featured a clip of Kean University professor Robin Landa linking Sweeney’s “good jeans” to the eugenics movement.
“The pun ‘good jeans’ activates troubling historical associations for this country. The American eugenics movement, in its prime between 1900 and 1940, weaponized the idea of good genes just to justify White supremacism,” she said.
Dunkin’ did not immediately reply to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.
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