Influencer Kylan Darnell’s latest “RushTok” social media post is under fire.
Darnell, 21, is currently in the middle of “Work Week” ahead of the 2025 Panhellenic recruitment at the University of Alabama. On Wednesday, August 6, Darnell and her Zeta Tau Alpha sorority sisters followed an “All the Places You Go” theme as they prepared to meet the latest crop of Potential New Members.
To honor the dress code, Darnell dressed like an airline pilot and posed in a vintage military plane for a TikTok video posted on Wednesday. Darnell sat in the cockpit, wearing a pair of aviator sunglasses while applying lip gloss.
Social media followers later noticed that the plane had 12 swastika decals on the wing. (The symbol is an infamous emblem of the Nazi party in Germany during World War II.)
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“Anyone else notice the swastikas?” one commenter wrote, while another added, “The symbol?”
A third TikTok user’s message, meanwhile, got Darnell’s attention.
“Babe, there’s 12 swastikas on the plane,” the individual wrote in the comments section. “You might wanna take this down before they come for you 
.”
Darnell subtly responded, replying in the comments section with a screenshot of the plane details. In Darnell’s picture, she shared an image of a web search for the North American P-51 Mustang aircraft.
“The North American P-51 Mustang was a long-range, single-seat fighter and former bomber used in World War II and the Korean War,” the description reads. “Designed in 1940 to meet specifications, the prototype, designated NA-73X, first flew on October 26, 1940.”
She also “liked” a separate comment that read, “Girl, an actual JET??!! How?”
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A spokesperson for Darnell addressed the backlash in a statement shared with Us Weekly.
“It’s important to understand the historical context of these markings before making assumptions,” the rep told Us in a Friday, August 8, statement. “The fighter plane Kylan Darnell used in her video is a North Americans P-51 Mustang, and the Swastikas are the number of enemy Nazi planes that were shot down by the United State Military in WWII. This plane wears those symbols as a historical badge of honor. To attribute this American warplane to being anything racist is ignorant.”
The social media personality and pageant queen, who is gearing up to start her senior year at Alabama, rose to fame when she shared “Get Ready With Me” videos while going through rush when she was a first-year student. Darnell has since continued to share behind-the-scenes content of her recruitment experience and daily outfits on her online accounts.
“Get dressed with me for the first day of ‘Work Week’ at Alabama. I’m a Zeta,” she said in a separate TikTok video posted on Wednesday. “Today, our theme is ‘All the Places You Go,’ and Zeta is being flight attendants [and] pilots. That’s our twist on it.”
Darnell explained in her video that she wanted to dress like an “authentic pilot from Leonardo DiCaprio’s Catch Me If You Can.”
“I’m getting excited,” she added. “I love when it’s a rush theme [where I can dress] like a guy. It’s so funny, but [I] like having a girly twist on it with the shorts.”
