Months after the release of the ad, Sydney Sweeney responded to the American Eagle controversy. Unfortunately, fans have since bashed the actress for her dismissive behavior.
Sydney Sweeney, known for her work in Euphoria, Anyone But You, and Christy, has been gaining popularity over the years for her bold personality. She’s also been the highlight of a few controversial moments, one being an American Eagle ad that was released earlier this year.
something about an ad sexualising a woman with blonde hair and blue eyes while commenting that she has great ‘jeans’ feels extremely conservative especially in this political climate https://t.co/s9XH04lCbD
— luna (@yooxical) July 25, 2025
The ad launched a thousand critiques from shocked viewers. Essentially, the ad featured Sydney Sweeney wearing jeans, staring into the camera, whispering: “Genes are passed down from parents to offspring, often determining traits like hair color, personality, and even eye color. My jeans are blue.”
The video has since been removed from American Eagle‘s social media channels, but it’s not been forgotten. While you might be thinking, it’s just an ad for blue jeans, but it’s really more than that. The ad campaign promoted eugenics, a discredited scientific theory popular among white supremacists that the human race could be improved by breeding out less desirable traits.
Damn I thought you all were joking but that Sydney Sweeney ad really does say "genes determine personality." Our culture is absolutely cooked
— Erik Baker (@erikmbaker) July 26, 2025
The fact that they used an attractive woman with blond hair and blue eyes while saying those words did not sit well with viewers. The ad received so much backlash that even President Donald Trump weighed in, going to X to post that Sydney Sweeney “has the HOTTEST ad out there.”
The ad was also a nod to an infamous Calvin Klein campaign from 1980 that starred a 15-year-old Brooke Shields, which received backlash for oversexualizing a minor in the advertisement.
Now, after months, Sydney Sweeney responds to the American Eagle controversy, and it did not go over well with fans. According to a GQ interview, Sweeney mentioned the ad, saying, “I mean, the reaction definitely was a surprise, but I love jeans. All I wear are jeans. I’m literally in jeans and a T-shirt every day of my life.”
The actress went on to say it was “surreal” to see the president and vice president of the United States commenting on her ad, while noting that much of the chatter didn’t make its way to her.
“I kind of just put my phone away,” she continued. “I was filming every day. I’m filming Euphoria, so I’m working 16-hour days and I don’t really bring my phone on set, so I work and then I go home and I go to sleep. So I didn’t really see a lot of it.”
Sweeney blatantly declined to defend the content of her ad itself, telling GQ that “when I have an issue that I want to speak about, people will hear.” She continued, saying she “knew at the end of the day what that ad was for, and it was great jeans,” so the situation “didn’t affect me one way or the other.”
When asked if she felt “thankful” that a powerful person like the President of the United States “had [her] back in public,” she replied, “Hm, I don’t think that… it’s not that I didn’t have that feeling but I wasn’t thinking of it like that, of any of it.”
It’s shocking to see that someone just does not concern themselves with these matters, especially in the world that we live in today. Not only is it tone-deaf, but it’s flaunting a privilege. Most of us do not have the privilege to put the phone away and ignore what’s happening in the world.