Enter Sydney Sweeney, the 27-year-old actress beloved for her roles in “Euphoria” and “The White Lotus,” whose recent Instagram post ignited a firestorm of controversy. Notably, this debate started after her most recent feature in an American Eagle advertisement campaign. The campaign features Sweeney in several trendy American Eagle denim looks. It is particularly renowned for boasting the Sydney Sweeney Has Amazing Jeans campaign. Although many lawmakers and activists have hailed the ad, some have criticized it for repeating dangerous societal rhetoric.
In one of her campaign videos, Sweeney swaggers in front of a poster showing off her own face. The headline says, “Sydney Sweeney must have some amazing genes.” This incautious statement sparked a ferocious backlash on social media, where it was taken by users as a deeply creepy wink to eugenics. Critics have pointed out that the focus on Sweeney, a white-blond-blue-eyed actress, is particularly troubling. They contend that this narrow approach plays right into ideologies associated with white supremacy.
Many social media users took their protests to the Federal Transit Administration. One user remarked, “getting a blue-eyed, blonde, white women and focusing your campaign around her having perfect genetics feels weird, especially considering the current state of America.” Another user stated, “the words we use are never unintentional,” suggesting that the choice of words in the campaign was deliberate and potentially harmful.
Many users on the political right lauded Sweeney’s campaign as a front in the war against what they call “wokeness.” One user proclaimed, “Woke advertising is dead, Sydney Sweeney killed it.” Such mixed reaction to the video underscores the cultural divisiveness characterizing the campaign.
Sweeney’s history with controversy is not new. In 2022, she faced a firestorm of criticism when pictures from her mom’s birthday party leaked. The photos featured attendees trying on chapeaus that looked almost identical to those associated with Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” campaign. Earlier this year, she shot to viral stardom by selling soap produced from her bathwater. As you can imagine, it sold out nearly instantly on the Dr Squatch website!
Neither Sydney Sweeney nor American Eagle has responded to ongoing backlash over the campaign as of Tuesday morning. That silence has many of these followers breathlessly awaiting a response, especially with the hyperbolic rhetoric persisting on social media.