Does Sydney Sweeney want to be the actress Gen Z loves to hate?

Independent

2 days ago

Right now, everyone is losing their minds over Sydney Sweeney's ad campaign for American Eagle denim. The 27-year-old actor who starred in Euphoria and The White Lotus has collaborated on a range of wide-legged jeans… and sparked a global outrage resulting in a non-committal explanation from the company.
In her advert, she introduces the new Sydney Jeans by saying: 'Genes are passed down from parents to offspring, often determining traits like hair colour, personality, and even eye colour.'
Once the camera has panned provocatively across the denim, as well as her blonde hair and her blue eyes, she declares: 'My jeans are blue.'
In case you missed the not-so subtle appeal to all-Americanness and the play on the word 'jeans', a voiceover then states: "Sydney Sweeney has great genes." In the clip, the word 'genes' is crossed out and replaced with 'jeans' – which The Atlantic dismissed as 'a garden-variety dad pun'.
The campaign has sparked an almighty backlash – and a debate about race and beauty standards – with some claiming the phrase 'great jeans', coupled with Sweeney's references to her hair and eye colour, recall white supremacy and eugenics, the discredited, racist belief once popularised by the Nazis that the human race can be improved through selective breeding.
Sydney Sweeney Has Great Jeans" is and always was about the jeans. her jeans. Her story. We'll continue to celebrate how everyone wears their AE jeans with confidence, their way. Great jeans look good on everyone.
The backlash was swift. Doja Cat was seemingly so incensed by the ad that she recreated it, reciting Sweeney's words in an exaggerated southern US accent, and changing the slogan to: 'My jeans are blee.'
Sayantani DasGupta, senior lecturer in the discipline of narrative medicine at Columbia University, is in no doubt that the ad – which is credited with helping boost American Eagle sales by $400million in a single day – is imbued with eugenic messaging: 'A woman of colour would not have been hired for this advertisement,' she says.
Seemingly in a bid to do some damage control, American Eagle has since posted an image of a mixed-race model in their apparel, along with the caption: 'AE has great jeans.' When that didn't calm things down, it shared a written post saying: ''Sydney Sweeney Has Great Jeans'' is and always was about the jeans. her jeans. Her story. We'll continue to celebrate how everyone wears their AE jeans with confidence, their way. Great jeans look good on everyone. ' Unfortunately, the reputational harm had already been done. Or has it?
While there would have been many, many meetings before this commercial got signed off – and it's hard to believe no one spoke up and flagged the connotations as a potential issue – to place the blame squarely on American Eagle is a mistake. Because it risks underestimating Sweeney, who, in recent years, has apparently not only chosen to lean into a hyper-sexualised image of herself, but also taken the active decision to make controversy her personal brand.
It really began in 2022, after Sweeney posted a series of images and videos from her mother's 60th birthday party – in which, viewers claimed, her 'family members' could be seen wearing Maga caps and 'Blue Lives Matter' tees. Her brother Trent was quick to defend the attire, stating that the hats actually read 'Make 60 Great Again', before she herself commented on the public's 'misinterpretations' of the situation.
She told Variety at the time: 'There were so many misinterpretations. The people in the pictures weren't even my family [...] The people who brought the things that people were upset about were actually my mom's friends from LA who have kids that are walking outside in the Pride parade, and they thought it would be funny to wear because they were coming to Idaho.' Hilarious.
More recently still, she was embroiled in another internet row over her 'bathwater soap'. Apparently due to huge demand, an unexpected collab came about because 'when your fans start asking for your bathwater, you can either ignore it, or turn it into a bar of Dr. Squatch soap'.
Some rightly pointed out how gross this was from a hygiene point of view (I don't know about you, but I will not be lathering someone's scummy bath suds on me – no matter how famous they are), while others claimed it was a feminist triumph – after all, nothing screams 'empowerment' like pandering to a creepy fetish and making money by catering to the male gaze.
Then came the bizarre campaign for Sweeney's new lingerie line, reportedly backed by Amazon boss Jeff Bezos, whose wedding to Lauren Sanchez she attended in June. It's not what she's selling that is the issue here though – nor is it necessarily her partnership with a man equally shrouded in controversy. It's that the promotional video for it was heavily influenced by Lolita.
Prancing around on an estate lawn, dodging sprinklers in a cotton teddy and knickers, with dewy makeup and sunglasses which may as well have been heart-shaped not only infantilises Sweeney, but glorifies the lore around Vladimir Nabokov's transgressive story of a paedophile who grooms an underage girl, and proceeds to justify his actions. This isn't marketed towards the wearer – it's marketed towards men.
And it's this part of her rebrand that is really confusing. Sweeney has spoken in the past of how she had 'no control' over how people sexualised her body, and how it has made her uncomfortable, detracting from her art. There are so many unnecessary nude scenes in Euphoria, it's more a showcase for her boobs than her acting abilities – which, by the way, she does have. Similarly, SNL viewers focused more on her low-cut dress than her comedic delivery when she hosted the show in 2024.
Yet, in the American Eagle campaign, she is going full throttle – not just by 'embracing' her sexuality and the ridiculous narrative around her body, but also the right-wing messaging.
So, what's it all for? Is it to remain relevant (she's had a number of acting gigs of late, but season three of Euphoria has been on ice for some time)? Is it simply a case of 'when life gives you lemons, make lemonade'? Or is this true-blue, all-American version her authentic self?
There's a lot of nuance to this – and I'm not saying that women shouldn't have the right to do and say as they please. Equality is to allow women the freedom to do just that. But when that freedom is only enjoyed by a select few who can afford to use the world as their playground without a second thought of the wider implications of their behaviour, it doesn't sit right with me – even less so when what they say and do has racial undertones.
What's equally frustrating is that Sweeney is talented. She's also a certain level of famous that doesn't require this kind of sellout behaviour; she's not some influencer desperate for brand partnerships.
Will the real Sydney Sweeney please stand up – for her sake, as much as ours?