Social media meltdown over Sydney Sweeney’s jeans ad, eugenics, Nazi dog whistle accusations, and over-wokeness, explained

Retail·Social MediaSocial media meltdown over Sydney Sweeney’s jeans ad, eugenics, Nazi dog whistle accusations, and over-wokeness, explainedBy Anne D'InnocenzioBy The Associated PressBy Anne D'InnocenzioBy The Associated Press What was Sydney Sweeney really up to?Scott A Garfitt/Invision/AP, FileU.S. fashion retailer American Eagle Outfitters wanted to make a splash with its new advertising campaign starring 27-year-old actor Sydney Sweeney

The ad blitz included “clever, even vocative language” and was “definitely going to push buttons,” the company’s chief marketing officer told trade media outlets

The question now is whether some of the public reactions the fall denim campaign duced is what American Eagle int

Titled “Sydney Sweeney has great jeans,” the campaign sparked a debate race, Western beauty standards, and the backlash to “woke” American and culture

Most of the negative reception focused on s 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 imved through selective breeding for certain traits

Marcus Collins, an assistant fessor of marketing at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of , 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 ers 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 requests for from The Associated Press

A snapshot of American Eagle The ad blitz comes as the teen retailer, many merchants, wrestles with sluggish consumer spending and higher costs from tariffs

American Eagle reported 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 celebrity collaborator, American Eagle’s stock closed more than 4% up. s were volatile this week and trading nearly 2% down Wednesday. 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 s a lineage with Calvin Klein jeans ads from 1980 that 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 vocative things shot in an interesting way,” Adamson 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 would mote the partnership in a way that matched

The campaign features s of Sweeney wearing slouchy jeans in various settings

She will appear on 3-D billboards in Times Square and elsewhere, speaking to users on Snapchat and Instagram, 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, with sales ceeds going to a nonfit crisis counseling service

In a news release, 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 , 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 in which Sweeney says, “Genes are passed down from parents to offspring, often determining traits hair color, personality and even eye color

My jeans are blue.” The appeared on American Eagle’s Facebook page and other social media channels but is not part of the campaign

While remarking that someone has good genes is sometimes used as a compliment, the phrase also has sinister connotations

Eugenics gained ity 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 motion 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 blems 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 testers

Viewers mocked the spot for appearing to trivialize tests of police killings of Black people

Pepsi apologized and pulled the ad

Some marketers say they’ve observed another shift since President Donald Trump returned to office and moved to abolish all federal DEI grams and policies

Jazmin Burrell, founder of brand consulting agency Lizzie Della Creative Strategies, said she’s noticed while shopping with her cousin more ads and signs that minently feature white models. “I can see us going back to a world where diversity is not really the standard expectation in advertising,” Burrell said

A year ago, the company released a limited edition denim collection with tennis star Coco Gauff

The retailer has an diversity, equity and inclusion gram that is primarily geared toward employees

Two days before announcing the Sweeney campaign, American Eagle named the 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 . “They were bably 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 fessor at Carnegie Mellon University’s Tepper School of , said she d 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 all the rules, you’ll make lots of people happy, but you’ll fail,” Adamson said. “The rocket won’t take off. ” Introducing the 2025 Fortune 500, the definitive ranking of the biggest companies in America

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