On July 23, American Eagle Outfitters released a video ad campaign for their new line of jeans, which quickly garnered backlash online. Featuring actress Sydney Sweeney, the ad centered around the jeans and genes homophone while showing Sweeney sporting a pair of blue jeans called “The Sydney Jean.” It ended with a voiceover that said, “Sydney Sweeney has great jeans.”
Almost immediately after the ad’s release, social media users began expressing concern about pro-eugenics and white supremacist undertones implied by the ad referencing Sweeney’s hair and eye color. People were divided on whether the ad was eugenics propaganda or an innocuous promotion with unintentional subtext.
“This ad came out and got people riled up about the brand. I think there was clear intention behind the ad to make people upset,” Katie Carroll ’27 said.
The online discourse brought American Eagle onto many social media users’ feeds. American Eagle reportedly gained 142,700 followers on Instagram in the month following the ad’s release, and after President Trump announced his support for the ad in a post on X, the price of the company’s stock increased by over 23%.
Leo Darani-Schwer ’27 said that the contentious nature of the ad was meant to build engagement. “[Creating controversy is] effective marketing, but ethically, I think it’s a little bit dubious. And I think it’s because we live in an online era where everyone can become easily polarized that ads like this can be so effective in spreading [a] message,” he said.
In response to the online backlash, American Eagle removed the ad from its Tiktok and Instagram pages about a week after its release. “‘Sydney Sweeney Has Great Jeans’ is and always was about the jeans,” American Eagle wrote in an Instagram post on Aug. 1. “Great jeans look good on everyone.”
The ad’s portrayal of Sweeney’s white features reminded some viewers of the history of white supremacy in the U.S. “As a brown woman … growing up in the United States, [I saw] imagery of white, thin, light-skinned, blue-eyed, blonde women being put up on a pedestal,” history teacher Kaylah Breiz ’17 said. “I believed, ‘Well, my genes aren’t good enough. I’m not beautiful enough to be in this conversation.’”
Ads focused on so-called beautiful genetics have been on Americans’ screens for decades. In fact, some pointed out similarities between American Eagle’s ad and a 1980 ad from clothing brand Calvin Klein. The Calvin Klein ad, which featured then-14-year-old actress Brooke Shields, also referenced the idea of superior genetics.
“I think [Sweeney’s ad] is very based off the Brooke Shields [ad],” English teacher Julian Morris said. “[Sweeney] is so emblematic of the [white] ideal and whatnot, so I thought it was pretty stupid of her and her team to do this ad. … [And] what makes it so insidious is that I don’t think she questioned the content.”
While some people online believed the backlash was overblown, others were critical of people who claimed the ad was completely unproblematic.
“A lot of conservatives like JD Vance [were] saying people are just mad when someone’s beautiful and [that] they’re just jealous,” Carroll said. “That really bothered me because it’s not … Sydney Sweeney [being] beautiful … that people are mad [about]. It’s the idea that she is beautiful because of specific genes that she has, that are out of anyone’s control [and] that give superiority.”
Regardless of individual opinions on the ad, social media users’ responses may point to a rise in critical media literacy. “If we’re able to catch white supremacist messaging in these ads today, I hope that it will allow [people] to continue to have some sort of critical thinking about the media that [they] consume,” Breiz said. “Hopefully it makes people more aware of … what the deeper meanings of things are.”