American Eagle wanted heat, and they got it.
The brand’s latest denim campaign, fronted by Euphoria and White Lotus star Sydney Sweeney, was built to provoke. “Clever, even provocative,” said their CMO to the trades, hinting they knew what they were doing. The campaign’s tagline—“Sydney Sweeney has great jeans”—was simple, cheeky, and, as it turns out, combustible.
Trouble started when some versions of the ad dropped the pun altogether and used “genes” instead of “jeans.” Cue the backlash. Online critics lit up the campaign as a thinly veiled nod to eugenics—the pseudoscientific belief in improving humanity through selective breeding. The fact that Sweeney is blonde-haired, blue-eyed, and visibly white only intensified the reaction.
For some, it was tone-deaf marketing at best, dog-whistle politics at worst.
“You can either say this was ignorance, or this was laziness, or say that this is intentional,” said Marcus Collins, a marketing professor at the University of Michigan. “Either one of the three aren’t good.” He suggested the controversy might’ve been defused—or at least complicated—if the ad had included a more diverse cast.
On the flip side, conservative commentators saw the outrage as proof that the culture war is still a profitable game. “I love how the leftist meltdown over the Sydney Sweeney ad has only resulted in a beautiful white blonde girl with blue eyes getting 1000x the exposure for her ‘good genes,’” wrote former Fox News host Megyn Kelly on X.
So far, American Eagle hasn’t said a word.
Whether the uproar was the point or just an expensive mistake, one thing’s clear: in 2025, a pair of jeans can still start a fire.
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Last modified: August 1, 2025
