Sydney Sweeney’s ‘Good Jeans’ American Eagle Campaign Has Gone Very Wrong 

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THE RUNDOWN:

• Sydney Sweeney‘s new campaign with American Eagle is receiving backlash with critics linking it to eugenics, Nazism and MAGA
• The Euphoria and White Lotus star has featured in several controversial campaigns over the last few years
• While the ad might be backfiring, American Eagle has seen a jump in profits, $200 million US raising questions about the return of sexism and conservatism in fashion advertising.

Sydney Sweeney is no stranger to controversial ads. In recent history, she has sold men her bathwater and in 2024, skincare lovers expressed discomfort about her advertisement with a skincare brand, in which the words “bouncy and firm” were plastered across her chest rather than, y’know, near her face. Now, she’s back in hot water with the campaign for American Eagle that has been called out as a “conservative dog whistle” and with headlines on Newsweek like “Sydney Sweeney Fronts Ad Campaign for Jeans – Sparks Debate About Eugenics.” Not the stuff of publicists’ dreams, so where did it all go wrong?

The Sydney Sweeney x American Eagle Controversy, Explained

Last Wednesday, American Eagle announced Sydney Sweeney would star in their new fall campaign. The title? “Sydney Sweeney has great jeans.”

According to Business of Fashion, the campaign was an almost immediate success. In the week after American Eagle dropped its ad featuring the Euphoria and White Lotus star, including a Times Square placement, its stock reportedly leapt by 18 percent. In a challenged market, it’s an outstanding result for a brand that’s been fading in relevance and struggling, like many, in a challenged economy. In May this year the retailer was feeling the pressure and withdrew its annual forecasts due to underperformance in the first quarter. Now it’s said to have added around US $200 million to its market value.

The racy, risqué concept looked like a stroke of brilliance—until people watched it.

There are several cuts of the ad, all of which end with a man’s voice quipping, “Sydney Sweeney has great jeans.”

The primary offender is an uncomfortable, overlong cut where Sydney Sweeney explains what “genes” (jeans, get it) are. It now seems to be hidden on American Eagle’s YouTube account. “My body’s composition is determined by my jeans,” Sweeney says as the camera narrows in on her breasts.“Hey, eyes are up here,” she playfully scolds the camera before continuing:

“Genes are passed down from parents to offspring, often determining traits like hair colour, personality and even eye colour,” the camera pans to her blue eyes. “My jeans are blue.”

The clip has been called out as a “racist dogwhistle” appealing to the MAGA (that’s Make America Great Again”) crowd and even “Nazi propaganda.”

The campaign has not been warmly received. “have yall tried changing your name to aryan eagle,” one commentor wrote. Another added: “teenage girl here – if sydney sweeney likes the jeans then I do not. I don’t like what she represents lately.”

Other comments followed like, “Coming from a natural blonde w blue eyes….pushing the “good genes” narrative of a blonde w blue eyes is certainly….a choice yikes,” and “Eugenics has entered the chat.”
“Hey AE remember when you pretended to care about diversity and inclusion? Wonder what happened… sales didn’t go so well for a year and since 2022 we’ve seen a slow rollout of conservative marketing and this campaign is quite frankly weird and sterile. So sad to see the regression play out in real time.”

How the “Jeans” Tips Into Eugenics

Dr. Anastasija Kārkliņa Gabriel, the author of Cultural Intelligence for Marketers, posted to LinkedIn about the campaign and it is going viral. The marketer breaks down why viewers are linking the work to eugenics.

Describing the campaign as “one of the most outrageously racist marketing outputs I’ve seen in quite a while” she wrote, “I haven’t been this disgusted since ZARA wrapped corpse-like mannequins in white cloth while thousands of civilians were being bombarded you know where in 2023.”
“When read semiotically, this marketing campaign parades the same symbols and codes long used to prop up eugenicist fantasies of racial supremacy and—by extension—MAGA.
Gabriel said that use of the term “blue blood” comes from the Spanish phrase “sangre azul”, which refers to the pale skin of the European aristocracy with “visible blue veins” and is seen as proof of a “so-called pure” lineage that was “untainted” by non-European ancestry.

She added: “Think a little about the ideological assumptions encoded in the media you consume and what’s actually being sold here. “It’s not just selling denim. It’s an ad campaign firmly rooted in the ideology of American whiteness.”

American Eagle’s social media followers seem to agree.

“I will be the friend that’s too woke because those American Eagle x Sydney Sweeney ads are weird…like fascist weird, like Nazi propaganda weird,” Midwesterngothic said in a TikTok describing the video of a “blond-haired, blue-eyed, white woman…talking about her genes.” “This is what happens when you have no people of colour in a room,” wrote another user. “Particularly in a time like this…this ad campaign got so caught up in this ‘clever’ play on words and this stunt the [people] in the room missed what was so blatantly obvious to anyone not White.”

The Brooke Shields And Calvin Klein Parallel

As if the eugenics and Nazi parallels weren’t bad enough, the clip is also being criticised for sexualising young women.

The most controversial cut is, again, the long version in which Sweeney gives her “jeans” speech. Viewers are drawing parallels with a controversial 1980 Calvin Klein ad that also used jeans/genes wordplay. The ad featured a 15‑year‑old Brooke Shields and used similar edits as she rolled on the floor and balanced on all fours, zipping up and stretching in tight Calvins while talking about her “great jeans,” before the underage model quipped suggestively, “You know what comes between me and my Calvins? Nothing.”

Shields, now 60, has since spoken out about the sexualisation she experienced as an underage actress and model. She also told Vogue that at 15, she didn’t understand the sexual innuendo or double entendres and was shocked by the backlash. “I didn’t think it was about underwear or sexual in nature. I was naive,” Shields says. “I think the assumption was that I was much more savvy than I ever really was. I was a virgin, and I was a virgin forever after that.”

The “Casting Couch” Tone

In the first video released, Sweeney—an accomplished actress in several hit TV series and one of the highest‑grossing romantic comedies of all time—seems to be auditioning for a role. “Hi, I’m Sydney Sweeney, and I’m from Spokane, Washington. I can work as a local hire as well, though, and I’m available for the American Eagle jeans campaign shoot.” A man asks to see her hands and says, “thanks, we’ll be in touch.”

Many commenters describe the ad as “weird” and “uncomfortable,” calling to mind the casting‑couch fantasy you’ll find in a specific type of 2000s pornography that features aspiring actresses sleeping with directors for a chance to feature in films.

Parallels have also been drawn with Sabrina Carpenter’s recent album scandal.

In one cut, Sweeney rolls around on the floor in loose‑cut denim jeans that retail for US $89.99 and smirks, “I bet you want to try these jeans.” In another, she’s hard at work on a car, and in a third, she rolls around on the floor with a dog, filming herself with a camcorder.

The off‑screen male voice positions Sweeney squarely in the male gaze—stirring similar feelings to the Sabrina Carpenter album that drew controversy earlier in the year (and also featured allusions to dogs with the title “Man’s Best Friend” and a dog collar—an animal often seen as “in the service” of men).

The difference is that Sabrina Carpenter was creatively in charge of the visuals, and the accompanying music worked as a critique of the dynamic it represented. While it made some people uncomfortable, it was clearly tongue‑in‑cheek.

This is not.

What Domestic‑Violence Charity Is Involved?

Bizarrely, given the overt sexism of it all, 100% of the purchase price of the “Sydney Jeans” will be donated to domestic‑violence charity Crisis Text Line. It’s a non‑profit text line that provides mental‑health support, and the butterfly motif on the back of the Sydney Jeans represents domestic‑violence awareness. It may be the only type of awareness going on in this campaign.

So… Why Did American Eagle Do This?

Rachel Tashjian and Shane O’Neill of The Washington Post noted Sydney Sweeney has been embraced by the far right. In 2024, the appearance of her breasts on Saturday Night Live was gleefully heralded as the “death of woke.” Conservative journalists wrote articles like “Wokeness is no match for Sydney Sweeney’s undeniable beauty” in “gotcha” style articles that seem to imply cultural shift towards being more aware of the plight of minority groups and a little bit nicer to each other that followed the Me Too and Black Lives Matter movements had been about undermining blonde and prodigiously chested women all along.

It’s important to note that this discourse has been imposed on Sweeney rather than shared by her, but the decision for a company that aligns itself with a certain brand of “Americana” to run with a spokesperson appropriated by the alt‑right as a feminine ideal (whose very existence in public is celebrated as antagonistic to the “woke” feminist agenda) seems odd—and is being interpreted as odd.

We can assume that money was the primary motivator for American Eagle taking a swing at this “sex sells” campaign. “There’s a consumer hunger for more risqué, bold campaigns, especially after a long period where brands were very risk‑averse,” Rebecca Rom‑Frank, senior marketing strategist at insights firm WGSN told Business of Fashion. “[American Eagle] has figured out a way to make this work by partnering with Sydney,” she added.

It’s possible the company has also been swept up in the alt‑right “edginess” currently saturating retail fashion. Dov Charney is back at Los Angeles Apparel, people are booking disgraced photographer Terry Richardson, and diversity seems less fashionable than it was five years ago. It remains to be seen whether they’ve taken things a step too far this time.

Has Sydney Sweeney Commented On The American Eagle Controversy?

Sweeney and American Eagle have yet to comment.

The post Sydney Sweeney’s ‘Good Jeans’ American Eagle Campaign Has Gone Very Wrong  appeared first on ELLE.

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