American Eagle is standing by its controversial ad campaign featuring Sydney Sweeney, which includes various commercials with the tagline: “Sydney Sweeney Has Great Jeans.” The campaign creates a pun around “great genes,” which ignited outrage online over American Eagle glorifying the Emmy nominee’s white heritage and thin physique. Some users on social media even compared the ads to “Nazi propaganda.”
“‘Sydney Sweeney Has Great Jeans’ is and always was about the jeans. Her jeans. Her story,” the company said in a statement posted on social media. “We’ll continue to celebrate how everyone wears their AE jeans with confidence, their way. Great jeans look good on everyone.”
Sweeney’s American Eagle campaign caused so much chatter online that even Trump’s White House weighed in on the backlash, with communications manager Steven Cheung calling the backlash a prime example of “cancel culture run amok.”
“This warped, moronic and dense liberal thinking is a big reason why Americans voted the way they did in 2024,” Cheung added. “They’re tired of this bullshit.”
Vice President JD Vance also mocked liberals for creating a hysteria around the American Eagle campaign, saying on an episode of the “Ruthless” podcast: “My political advice to the Democrats is continue to tell everybody who thinks Sydney Sweeney is attractive is a Nazi. That appears to be their actual strategy.”
Vance continued, “I mean, it actually reveals something pretty interesting about the Dems, though, which is that you have, like, a normal all-American beautiful girl doing like a normal jeans ad, right? They’re trying to sell, you know, sell jeans to kids in America and they have managed to so unhinge themselves over this thing. And it’s like, you guys, did you learn nothing from the November 2024 election? I actually thought that one of the lessons [Democrats] might take is we’re going to be less crazy. And the lesson they have apparently taken is we’re going to attack people as Nazis for thinking Sydney Sweeney is beautiful.”
Even Stephen Colbert, who frequently speaks out against Trump and the White House, called the backlash against Sweeney and American Eagle overblown.
“Now, some people look at [the ads] and they’re seeing something sinister, saying that the genes-jeans denim wordplay in an ad featuring a white blond woman means American Eagle could be promoting eugenics, white supremacy and Nazi propaganda,” Colbert said this week on “The Late Show.” “That might be a bit of an overreaction.”
Sweeney has yet to publicly comment on the outcry over the advertisements.
