ALBAWABA - You may have seen that Sydney Sweeney and American Eagle are getting a lot of bad press for their new jeans ads.
A lot of people have said bad things about the new jeans promotion, from how sexualized Sydney is to the way she speaks. Some people have said that there are racial themes and links to eugenics, which is probably what people have talked about the most.
In this case, the campaign's slogan is "Sydney Sweeney has great jeans," and it's made clear that the whole thing is a play on Sydney's "great genes." Some people are upset that Sydney's genes as a blonde, blue-eyed, white woman are praised, and they say that AE is supporting eugenics and "white supremacy."
American Eagle Instagram profile
One of the clips that received the most backlash centers on Sydney saying, “Genes are passed down from parents to offspring, often determining traits like hair color, personality, and even eye color. My jeans are blue.” The social media pages of AE seem to have been hacked to get this video.
Especially in the current political climate, being accused of promoting whiteness is not a great look for the brand, nor for Sydney, who has previously had to address “misinterpretations” about her and her family’s political stance after people on her Instagram page were seen wearing MAGA-style hats.
It's important to note that Sydney has stayed politically neutral in public even though her family has been talked about.
The government has now joined the public discussion about the AE, which is still going on. On July 29, White House communications manager Steven Cheung took to X to share a screenshot of an MSNBC headline suggesting that the AE ad is indicative of an “unbridled cultural shift toward whiteness.” Cheung said that the response was "cancel culture gone wild" and criticized "dense liberal thinking."
“This warped, moronic, and dense liberal thinking is a big reason why Americans voted the way they did in 2024,” he wrote. "This crap is getting old for them."
As you might expect, the White House's answer has made people talk even more about Sydney and the contentious campaign. People are very angry about the latest comments online, with many pointing out that it hasn't made things better and that it's not good for Sydney that the Trump administration is supporting her.
