Before Sydney Sweeney made national headlines for her American Eagles jeans, there was another advertising campaign fronted by the “Euphoria” Emmy nominee that garnered controversy on social media. That campaign was for the bath products company Dr. Squatch, which started selling a limited-edition soap to men that was infused with Sweeney’s “bathwater.” The product, officially called Sydney’s Bathwater Bliss, sold out in seconds.
“I’s important to have a finger on the pulse of what people are saying, because everything is a conversation with the audience,” Sweeney recently told The Wall Street Journal about how she tracks public perception of her output.
When it came to backlash against Sydney’s Bathwater Bliss, the actor and producer noticed that “it was mainly the girls making comments about it, which I thought was really interesting. They all loved the idea of Jacob Elordi’s bathwater.”
Sweeney is referring to the candle that was branded Jacob Elordi’s Bathwater, released in January 2024 amid the social media attention around “Saltburn,” which starred her “Euphoria” co-star. In the film, directed by Emerald Fennell, Barry Keoghan’s character becomes obsessed with Elordi’s and slurps up the bathwater he was soaking in while masturbating. The Elordi bathwater candle became a viral sensation that spawned many lusty memes. But as Sweeney noted, she believes her bathwater product was met with comparative divisiveness.
The backlash that greeted Sydney’s Bathwater Bliss is nothing compared to the conversation that ignited online this summer over Sweeney’s American Eagle jeans campaign. The ads were built around the slogan “Sydney Sweeney has great jeans.” The slogan was a riff on “great genes,” which caused some voices to denounce the campaign for glorifying her 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,” American Eagle said in a statement defending the campaign. “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.” The actor has yet to comment publicly on the campaign controversy.
