Jeans, Genes, and Judgement: The Backlash Behind Sydney Sweeney’s American Eagle Campaign
Sydney Sweeney walked into an ad. The internet turned it into a Rorschach test.
American Eagle’s latest campaign, built around a clever pun – “Sydney Sweeney has great jeans” – was designed to go viral. It did.
But not just because of the denim. Within hours of its release, the spot had sparked memes, Twitter threads, and a culture war’s worth of hot takes.
Some thought it was cheeky. Others, reductive. And plenty weren’t sure what they were watching, only that it made them feel… something.
The concept was simple: a denim ad with a twist. “My genes are blue,” Sweeney says, lounging in a pair of American Eagle jeans. The line is part science class, part wink. The camera lingers on her figure just long enough to prompt the actress to smirk and deliver a meta punchline: “Hey, eyes up here.” It’s flirty, self-aware, and calibrated for the social media age.
But depending on who you ask, it was either harmless fun or a billboard for outdated beauty ideals.
Soon, critics were accusing the campaign of leaning into “eugenics-coded” messaging.
The focus on Sweeney’s “great genes” – while she appears as a white, blonde, blue-eyed woman with a traditionally slim figure – wasn’t lost on viewers familiar with the darker legacy of that phrase.
TikTok and X exploded with commentary, dissecting whether the ad was just tone-deaf or something more insidious. As covered by The Independent, the brand’s swift crisis response showed it wasn’t ignoring the growing noise.
Sweeney, of course, didn’t write the copy. But her presence alone carries cultural baggage.
Her roles in Euphoria, The White Lotus, and Anyone But You navigate a razor-thin edge between hyperfeminine fantasy and modern autonomy.
Off-screen, her political affiliations (or her family’s, at least) have made headlines.
She’s become a kind of generational cipher – an actress who draws both adoration and suspicion depending on the lens she’s viewed through.
So when the ad praised her “great genes,” it was never just about denim. Not really. And definitely not to everyone watching.
What followed the initial backlash wasn’t just a Twitter pile-on. It became a real business concern.
American Eagle disabled comments, paused ad placements, and reportedly began hiring for a social media crisis manager role within days of the controversy.
Meanwhile, major news outlets scrambled to decode the backlash. Some dismissed it as overblown.
Others said it proved how easily brand storytelling can stumble into ideological landmines.
Even the White House weighed in. Trump communications director Steven Cheung dismissed the backlash as “moronic,” calling it a symptom of cancel culture run amok and blaming liberal critics rather than the ad itself.
Senator Ted Cruz weighed in on X, sarcastically noting, “Now the crazy Left has come out against beautiful women. I’m sure that will poll well.”
This turned the moment into a proxy battleground in the broader political clash over the limits of ‘wokeness,’ with some voices arguing that even light-hearted ads were now being weaponised in online culture wars.
This statement effectively framed the situation as yet another skirmish in the ongoing battle over cultural values and what some critics labelled the “woke left.”
Pop culture didn’t stay silent either. Doja Cat posted a viral TikTok mocking the ad’s line in an exaggerated Southern drawl – “My jeans are blue” – lampooning the copy in a way that underscored how instantly meme-able and divisive it became.
@dojacat my jeans are blee
♬ original sound – Doja Cat
The clip amassed over 16 million views, adding fuel to the cultural commentary and raising eyebrows across both the fashion and entertainment industries.
The Politics of Aesthetic Nostalgia
There’s an ongoing shift in what mainstream beauty looks like – or at least, what it’s allowed to look like in public.
In recent years, fashion campaigns have leaned into casting diversity across race, body size, and gender presentation. Sweeney’s campaign felt like a step backward.
With her symmetrical face, blonde waves, and hourglass figure, she recalled a mid-2000s Abercrombie catalogue. That likely wasn’t accidental.
Some critics say this wasn’t just a return to “sexy” advertising. It was a deliberate move away from the industry’s push toward diversity.
As one Redditor phrased it, “We’re watching the pendulum swing back. The industry is quiet-quitting diversity.”
The Beyoncé x Levi’s comparison sharpened the contrast. Her revival of the iconic ’80s “tighty whities” jeans ad was also overtly sexual, yet widely praised.
Why? Because Beyoncé shaped that narrative herself. Her legacy as a Black woman reshaping American beauty politics reframed the nudity as self-expression, not objectification.
Sweeney, by contrast, was cast into the frame. And that frame looked a lot like pre-2010 Victoria’s Secret.
Genes, Memes, and Biological Language
What unsettled people wasn’t just the focus on beauty. It was the phrase: “great genes.”
That’s not standard fashion copy. It echoes language used in biology, and history offers plenty of reasons why “good genes” discourse raises red flags.
The 20th-century eugenics movement used similar terms to justify ideas about who deserved to reproduce.
This ad clearly wasn’t written with that history in mind. But critics saw the phrasing as a kind of dog whistle, using seemingly innocuous language to subtly signal old hierarchies under the guise of humour or nostalgia.
The internet rarely separates intention from impact, especially when optics feel off.
No one in the campaign explicitly said anything exclusionary. Still, the symbolism struck a nerve.
A slim, white actress with blue eyes being praised for her inherited value is an image that prompts questions.
Combined with the pun, it made people wonder what message was being sent to everyone who didn’t look like her.
Gen Z, in particular, is fluent in these dynamics. They meme them, parody them, and call them out.
That’s why some of the backlash was humorous – TikTok duets mocking the “My genes are blue” line – and some deeply critical. It all pointed to the same thing.
Beauty politics are now debated, dismantled, and reshaped in real time. Especially when a brand tries to be too clever.
Was It Really That Serious?
That depends. Some saw the ad as a blip. A clumsy joke in a 24-hour news cycle. Others viewed it as a sign. A reminder that fashion still struggles to let go of 20th-century beauty hierarchies.
This time, those ideals weren’t subtle. They winked straight into the camera and told viewers where to look.
But it’s also true that a large portion of the public didn’t find the ad offensive at all. Some found the pun clever, even charming.
Others didn’t interpret it through a political lens at all. Many simply scrolled past it, chuckled, or shrugged, treating it like any other cheeky ad.
A few users even pointed out the irony that a joke about “great genes” could only be controversial in a culture hyper-aware of every pixel.
The response wasn’t cleanly divided, but you could almost track it platform by platform.
TikTok and Instagram saw waves of parodies and critiques, many from Gen Z users fluent in irony and digital drag.
One of the most shared reactions came from TikTok creator @genericartdad, who said, “American Eagle pulled the most controversial ad, but the whole ‘Sydney Sweeney Has Good Jeans’ campaign is a bit icky for a few reasons. That said, I’ve seen some real stretching from people on this one.”
@genericartdad American Eagle pulled the most controversial ad, but the whole “Sydney Sweeney Has Good Jeans” campaign is a bit icky for a few reasons. That said, I’ve seen some real stretching from people on this one.
♬ original sound – GenericArtDad
The post highlighted how even within the backlash, nuance was possible – calling out tone-deafness without declaring cultural war.
On Reddit and Facebook, some users rolled their eyes at the whole ordeal, arguing the outrage said more about online culture than the ad itself.
For them, it was a pun – not a panic button. For them, the ad was just marketing. Not a manifesto.
There’s also the question of how much the media shaped the drama in the first place.
Headlines lit the match, but for many viewers, it never turned into a fire.
The noise online was loud, sure – but that doesn’t mean the majority were genuinely outraged. It may have simply echoed louder than it landed.
What Now?
The bigger question isn’t whether Sydney Sweeney has “great genes.” It’s whether brands can keep treating inherited traits as aesthetic selling points.
In an age of algorithmic filters, revived anti-fat rhetoric, and social media activism, even a pun can sound like a throwback to something many people want to leave behind.
The bigger question isn’t whether Sydney Sweeney has ‘great genes’ – it’s whether brands can afford to be this clever with identity in 2025.
Because when a denim pun becomes a battleground, it’s not just about jeans. It’s about who’s watching, and how fast it can all go south.
