American Eagle's 'good jeans' ads with Sydney Sweeney spark a debate on race and beauty standards
It has. The question now is whether some of the public reactions the fall denim campaign produced is what American Eagle intended.
Titled 'Sydney Sweeney has great jeans,' the campaign sparked a debate about race, Western beauty standards, and the backlash to 'woke' American politics and culture. Most of the negative reception focused on videos that used the word 'genes' instead of 'jeans' when discussing the blonde-haired, blue-eyed actor known for the HBO series 'Euphoria' and 'White Lotus.'
Some critics saw the wordplay as a nod, either unintentional or deliberate, to eugenics, a discredited theory that held humanity could be improved through selective breeding for certain traits.
Marcus Collins, an assistant professor of marketing at the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business, said the criticism could have been avoided if the ads showed models of various races making the 'genes' pun.
'You can either say this was ignorance, or this was laziness, or say that this is intentional,' Collins said. 'Either one of the three aren't good.'
Other commenters on social media accused detractors of reading too much into the campaign's message.
'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,'" former Fox News host Megyn Kelly wrote Tuesday on X.
American Eagle didn't respond to queries from AP for comment.
A snapshot of American Eagle
The ad blitz comes as the teen retailer, like many merchants, wrestles with sluggish consumer spending and higher costs from tariffs. American Eagle reported in late May that total sales were down 5% for its February-April quarter compared to a year earlier.
A day after Sweeney was announced as the company's latest celebrity collaborator, American Eagle's stock closed more than 4% up. The company's shares were trading nearly 2% on Wednesday.
Like many trendy clothing brands, American Eagle has to differentiate itself from other mid-priced chains with a famous face or by saying something edgy, according to Alan Adamson, co-founder of marketing consultancy Metaforce.
Adamson said the Sweeney campaign shares a lineage with Calvin Klein jeans ads from 1980 that featured a 15-year-old Brooke Shields saying, 'You want to know what comes in between me and my Calvins? Nothing.' Some TV networks declined to air the spots because of its suggestive double entendre and Shields' age.
'It's the same playbook: a very hot model saying provocative things shot in an interesting way,' he said.
Billboards, Instagram and Snapchat
Chief Marketing Officer Craig Brommers told industry news website Retail Brew last week that 'Sydney is the biggest get in the history of American Eagle,' and the company planned to promote the partnership in a way that matched.
The campaign features videos of Sweeney wearing slouchy jeans in various settings. Her image will appear on 3-D billboards in Times Square and elsewhere, on Snapchat speaking to users, and in an AI-enabled try-on feature.
American Eagle also plans to launch a limited edition Sydney jean to raise awareness of domestic violence and to donate the sales proceeds to the nonprofit Crisis Text Line.
In a news release about the ads, the company noted 'Sweeney's girl next door charm and main character energy – paired with her ability to not take herself too seriously – is the hallmark of this bold, playful campaign.'
Jeans, genes and their many meanings
In one video, Sweeney walks toward an American Eagle billboard of her and the tagline 'Sydney Sweeney has great genes.' She crosses out 'genes' and replaces it with 'jeans.'
But what critics found the most troubling was a teaser video in which Sweeney says, 'Genes are passed down from parents to offspring, often determining traits like hair color, personality and even eye color. My jeans are blue.'
The video appeared on American Eagle's Facebook page and other social media channels but is not part of the official campaign.
While remarking that someone has good genes is sometimes used as a compliment, the phrase also has sinister connotations. Eugenics gained popularity in early 20th century America, and Nazi Germany embraced it to carry out Adolf Hitler's plan for an Aryan master race.
Civil rights activists have noted signs of eugenics regaining a foothold through the far right's promotion of the 'great replacement theory,' a racist ideology that alleges a conspiracy to diminish the influence of white people.
Shalini Shankar, a cultural and linguistic anthropologist at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, said she had problems with American Eagle's 'genes' versus 'jeans' because it exacerbates a limited concept of beauty.
'American Eagle, I guess, wants to rebrand itself for a particular kind of white privileged American,' Shankar said. 'And that is the kind of aspirational image they want to circulate for people who want to wear their denim.'
A cultural shift in advertising
Many critics compared the American Eagle ad to a misstep by Pepsi in 2017, when it released a TV ad that showed model Kendall Jenner offer a can of soda to a police officer while ostensibly stepping away from a photo shoot to join a crowd of protesters.
Viewers mocked the spot for appearing to trivialize protests of police killings of Black people. Pepsi apologed and pulled the ad.
The demonstrations that followed the 2020 killing of George Floyd by a white police officer in Minneapolis pushed many U.S. companies to make their advertising better reflect consumers of all races.
Some marketers say they've observed another shift since President Donald Trump returned to office and moved to abolish all federal DEI programs and policies.
Jazmin Burrell, founder of brand consulting agency Lizzie Della Creative Strategies, said she's noticed while shopping with her teenage daughter more ads and signs that prominently feature white models.
'I can see us going back to a world where diversity is not really the standard expectation in advertising,' Burrell said.
American Eagle's past and future
American Eagle has been praised for diverse marketing in the past, including creating a denim hijab in 2017 for customers who wore the traditional Muslim head scarves. Its Aerie lingerie brand was recognized for creating a wide range of sizes. A year ago, the company released a limited edition denim collection with tennis player Coco Gauff.
The retailer has an ongoing diversity, equity and inclusion program that is primarily geared toward employees. Two days before announcing the Sweeney campaign, American Eagle named the latest recipients of its scholarship award for employees who are driving anti-racism, equality and social justice initiatives.
Marketing experts offer mixed opinions on whether the attention surrounding 'good jeans' will be good for business.
'They were probably thinking that this is going to be their moment," Myles Worthington, the founder and CEO of marketing and creative agency WORTHI. "But this is doing the opposite and deeply distorting their brand."
Melissa Murphy, a marketing professor at Carnegie Mellon University's Tepper School of Business, said she liked certain parts of the campaign but hoped it would be expanded to showcase people besides Sweeney for the 'sake of the brand.'
Other experts say the buzz is good even if it's not uniformly positive.
'If you try to follow all the rules, you'll make lots of people happy, but you'll fail,' Adamson said. 'The rocket won't take off. '
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It's a daunting transition even for the most well-resourced young Sherpa, which is why Moro told me he felt the urgency to 'grab' the teen, as he put it, and mentor him, 'before he falls into the trap of becoming another famous 8,000-meter-peak collector.' In inviting Nima to Manaslu, Moro hoped both to teach skills and instill the kind of worldview he said Nima will need to make it as a professional adventurer. The leap that Nima needs to make from commercial mountaineering to alpinism could be years long. He'll have to learn skills like ice climbing and placing gear, alpinist and former North Face team manager Conrad Anker told me. He'll also likely have to travel to North America or Europe to train on rock and ice, as it takes days to approach most peaks in Nepal. And he'll have to develop an eye for identifying his own projects. But in the age of the athlete-influencer, there may be a different way for Nima, one modeled by Nepali climbers like Nims. Climbing purists said that Nims's feat was primarily one of logistics and marketing—he achieved a speed record he essentially invented, one utilizing every accoutrement from helicopters to bottled oxygen—yet he nonetheless circumvented the traditional path to stardom. Nima, too, seems to be betting on this model of building his brand alongside his bona fides. 'Climbing both [Everest and Lhotse] on the same day,' he wrote in April 2024 on Instagram, 'is almost unheard of, and I found myself doing it as the mountain spirits guided me.' Still, storytelling can go only so far. Nims's record was paradigm shifting, and the long process through which Dawa Yangzum obtained her IFMGA certification is widely respected in climbing. Nima may be able to find his own path to professional climbing. But if you want to climb for a brand like The North Face, Anker says, you have to 'climb hard.' (You can still climb Mount Everest. Here's how to do it responsibly.) As with many prodigies, it's hard to tell how much of Nima's ambition is innate versus inherited, the result of some subtle parental prodding. As Tashi drove Nima and me around Kathmandu in his leather-lined SUV one afternoon, the two took turns telling Nima's origin story, passing the ball to one another smoothly in the front seats. Tashi's support of Nima has been tireless and unconditional. When Nima wanted to become a professional soccer player, Tashi tried to link him up with an elite coach. When that fizzled, he took his son to the climbing gym. When Nima wanted to become a photographer, he took him trekking to shoot photos. Tashi, who at 39 wore thick-framed black glasses and a stylish fade, said, 'I bought, like, a Sony A7?' 'Sony A7, yeah,' Nima agreed with a chuckle, from the passenger seat. 'A Sony A7 for him, and several lenses,' Tashi continued. 'Then I took him to Kongma La Pass, right?' This is a multiday trek in Nepal. 'Just the two of us, yeah.' 'Just him and me,' Tashi agreed. 'I saw that he's very strong.' It was on this trek, when Nima was 15, that Tashi suggested it might be 'interesting,' as Nima recalled it, for him to climb the 14 peaks as a teenager. Nima went home and did his research, then told his dad, Let's do it. The father's idea had become the son's. Initially, the 14-peaks project was a creative, mostly selfish endeavor: Inspired by Asian American adventure photographer and National Geographic Explorer Jimmy Chin, Nima wanted to produce a documentary. But on his first climb, Manaslu, in September 2022, he saw something surprising. He never knew much about the family business, and had always assumed his father's clients must be elite-level athletes to climb big mountains. Now he saw that in fact, many of them were average, even slow. Meanwhile Sherpas outpaced everybody and carried their loads. Seeing their raw talent, he began to wonder why there was no world-famous Sherpa climber today. Thanks to his father's connections, Nima (right) never had to make a living hauling gear and supplies on the steep trails leading to the high peaks. Photograph by Krystle Wright His motivation was galvanized, however, on his first trip to Shishapangma, a year before he'd ultimately summit. It was October 7, 2023, and Nima was at Base Camp. A Seven Summit Sherpa named Tenjen 'Lama' Sherpa, whom Nima had grown close to, was also on the mountain, assisting climber Gina Rzucidlo as she attempted to become the first American woman to summit the 14 peaks. Another American, Anna Gutu, was also targeting her 14th peak the same day. On their summit push, Gutu and her partner were killed in an avalanche. Lama and Rzucidlo were just below the summit, and Nima radioed to advise that they descend. But Rzucidlo wanted to continue, and shortly after, a second avalanche claimed both her and Lama's lives. Nima was in shock. Lama had come to feel like one of his guardian angels on the mountain. Afterward, he was depressed for months. 'I just felt very demotivated,' he said. 'Not just in climbing. In life itself.' It was during this time that he began to use the hashtag 'sherpapower.' He realized he wanted to be a voice for the Sherpa community. He wanted his people to feel that their lives had value beyond the measure of their wages. 'Let's say they make $4,000 a summit,' he said. 'I don't know if there's any job where you get paid this and it's so risky.' Sherpas 'literally feel' for their clients, he told me pointedly, sacrificing their own safety and even lives to help them summit. This kind of courage and loyalty, he said, 'is not something money can buy.' They deserved for their stories to be told, he thought—to be honored like heroes, not just paid like help. Over the years, Tashi has witnessed the death of many Sherpas like Lama, which is why he always told his own son that if he were to climb, he'd climb as an athlete, not a guide. If Nima was going to risk it all, he would risk it for his own dreams. Nima's climbing was nonetheless extremely stressful for Tashi and his wife, Leema. Tashi says he hid his worry—he didn't want to affect Nima's decision-making in the mountains—but behind the scenes he spun a protective web. He assigned one of his ace guides, Pasang Nurbu Sherpa, as Nima's climbing partner; he kept helicopters on standby while they climbed; he cut clients deals to beef up the man power on Nima's expeditions. On summit days, he didn't sleep, refreshing Nima's GPS tracker every 10 minutes. Whenever Tashi thought about calling his son back, he reminded himself, We are on a mission. (That's the word he uses, 'we.') 'I want to make him a super climber, super athlete,' he said. 'So I manage my emotions.' Tashi also wanted to shield Nima from another fraught aspect of the guiding business. Especially in its early years, Seven Summit was criticized for its safety record, and some said the company brought dangerously inexperienced guides and climbers onto the mountains. (The brothers acknowledged some growing pains but said they recruited many new Sherpas to the industry who are now trained and experienced, and train clients on lower peaks before they climb eight-thousanders.) In channeling Nima toward a different path, Tashi hoped to keep his son from the controversy that's dogged him and his family. 'He can have another type of job and professionalism as an athlete,' he said. Of course, Tashi could have encouraged his son to pursue a profession outside of climbing, as many Sherpas have urged their children to do. Any 8,000-meter peak can kill you, and the dangers are magnified in the winter, when temperatures plummet and avalanche risk increases. Going in alpine style removes the added security of fixed lines and bottled oxygen. The first time Moro attempted a winter alpine-style 8,000-meter ascent, an avalanche killed both his climbing partners. I asked Tashi what he'd say to parents who wonder how he can not only let his son do something so dangerous but also fund it. 'I think'—he said, pausing thoughtfully—'creating history is not normal. It's not simple.' Abid, Nima's former manager, offered his theory. 'I think Tashi is living vicariously through Nima,' he said. But when you're a parent whose life story is entangled within a generations-long struggle for equality, your children may serve as a proxy for more than your own unrealized ambitions. Tashi has seen so many strong Sherpa boys working for the glory of others, he told me, so much of his people's talent hired away. He always wanted to see one of those young athletes climb unencumbered. 'This is a totally different opportunity for the Sherpa community,' he said, 'and I really want to send my son in this way.' Annapurna was the first of all the eight-thousanders to be climbed, but it's also one of the deadliest— for every three climbers who stand on the summit, one will die trying to get there. Nima reached the peak in the spring of 2024 without the use of supplemental oxygen. Photograph by Manish Maharjan In Kathmandu in December, you can be seduced into believing winter won't kill you. The day that Nima left for his climb was like all the other days before it: sunny and mild, the smog-filled sky a dingy blue. I boarded an orange Heli Everest chopper with Nima, Moro, and Polish filmmaker Oswald Rodrigo Pereira, 40, their climbing partner. The plan was to fly into the Everest valley and trek five days to the Base Camp of Ama Dablam, a technical, 6,812-meter peak known as the Matterhorn of the Himalaya, where I'd catch a heli ride back. They'd climb Ama Dablam to acclimatize, then fly out to the Manaslu valley. The helicopter soared over green hills rippled with farming terraces, carved from the mountain like stadium steps. Snowcapped peaks lined the horizon, each big and beautiful enough to anchor a national park on its own. This was awe-inspiring stuff for most people, but for Nima, it was a commute. He'd fallen asleep. During the past few days in Kathmandu, I'd witnessed the muscle of Seven Summit firsthand. Everywhere I went, I bumped into smiling, clean-faced young men wearing company puffies and ball caps. Nima was cocooned within this universe, chauffeured and flanked constantly by the Sherpas in his father's employ. Does Nima fully understand what achieving his dream would require, from the hard work to the risktaking it would demand? He says he does, but for all his precociousness, here was an 18-year-old who still compared climbing to the epic adventures out of his favorite fantasy books. 'Winter expedition is like Lord of the Rings,' he said with exuberance, or 'When you read Harry Potter, it makes you excited. I feel like I'm in that life right now.' In both these stories, a hero—a chosen one—goes on a quest to save the people he loves. Harry Potter is destined by prophecy to save wizardkind; Frodo carries the Ring to save Middle Earth. Nima, too, sees himself as a messenger for his community. 'I think at the young age that he is, he already has a big burden on him, that he also imposes on himself,' Pereira later told me. In the helicopter, Nima woke up. We were wearing soundproof headsets, so he used his iPhone camera to show me Everest, zooming in on the snow-covered pyramid. Then he opened his notepad and typed me a message: 'The prince returns to the mountains.' Nima's first noncommercial expedition began smoothly, with days of dry weather on Ama Dablam. Nima, Moro, and Pereira enjoyed two easy rotations—acclimatization trips—up to Camps I and II. But the night before their summit bid, it snowed. With the rocks now slick, the climbers had to brace more often against fixed ropes, and on the second day, Nima's hands and forearms began to cramp. The trio decided to turn around several hundred feet below the summit and move on to Manaslu with less acclimatization than they'd hoped. After they reached Manaslu Base Camp a week and a half later, it snowed again. Then the forecast deteriorated further: three straight weeks of winds projected at over 90 miles an hour, creating dangerous climbing conditions. If they waited, they'd lose what acclimatization they had. After a week at Base Camp, they canceled the expedition. Nima and Moro immediately planned another attempt on Manaslu next winter. 'I felt like this was the best expedition of my life,' Nima told me. The extreme conditions exhilarated him, and compared to commercial expeditions, 'everything was in our hands.' Nima's greatest challenge now may be to stay focused on climbing. After Manaslu, he once again has a lot going on. He recently signed a book deal and announced that he's a climate influencer for the United Nations Development Programme in Nepal. In the spring he went to Everest Base Camp, but not to climb—he was helping his dad manage logistics, sitting for interviews with an American news crew, and assisting a company that was experimentally using drones to haul trash off the mountain. He'd also incorporated a company of his own, to make souvenirs from all that trash. He was training for Manaslu, he told me, but he was vague about how much, saying that he was trail running and strength training but didn't track his workouts. It remains to be seen if Nima will be the breakthrough athlete he wants to be. He has his doubters. His privilege is a source of ire among some in his own community, and several people I interviewed wanted me to know that Nepal has many talented young climbers today, not just Nima—climbers who would have his profile if they had his opportunities. But Nima believes that whether he achieves his goal or not, he's done something for his community already. (When climbing the world's tallest mountains, what counts as cheating?) On our trek's fourth day, I asked him what he thought of the debate about his climbing style. The sun was sinking below the mountains, and we were in a chilly room of a rustic lodge in the Sherpa village of Deboche. Was he aware that some people dismissed climbing 8,000-meter peaks as he did, with oxygen and fixed lines and Sherpa support? That people suggested that, in the eyes of 'real climbers,' he had yet to achieve much? Nima was sitting in a chair with his arms crossed. He didn't even pause. He said he didn't think those criticisms applied to him, then laughed. If he was a grown man making a big deal out of his accomplishments, they might have a point. 'But I'm just 16, 17 years old, just figuring it out,' he said, reminding me how young he was when he started climbing in the high peaks, so give him a break. Nima knows that what he did was impressive at his age. He understands that the story of Sherpas in the past 15 years has been one of the power of role-modeling, of being able to see heroes made in your own image and then daring to imagine yourself surpassing them. He believes he moved the right people. 'If I was someone else and I saw an 18-year-old did this,' he said, 'I'd be inspired.' A version of this story will appear in the November 2025 issue of National Geographic magazine.
