Why Are People Mad About Sydney Sweeney’s Jeans Ads?

In one of the worst cases of being unable to read the room in recent history, American Eagle’s latest campaign is being torn to shreds online for having horrible vibes. The vibe in question is fascism, and people are calling out the brand for what they claim is eugenics propaganda in its new slate of ads starring Sydney Sweeney. What a sentence!

Last Wednesday, American Eagle launched its latest campaign, titled “Sydney Sweeney Has Great Jeans.” In a press release, the brand referred to their latest marketing push as “bold,” “playful,” and “cheeky.” Some people online, though, are calling it “a dog whistle” that “promot[es] eugenics.” Turns out people do not want to hear a blonde white woman talking about how amazing her genes are right now. There’s a lot going on here, so let’s unzip this debacle together.

What is the Sydney Sweeney campaign causing the uproar?

The concept behind the ads is that Sweeney is wearing American Eagle denim and talking about her great jeans/genes. She’s a beautiful woman, so she’s clearly inherited great DNA, but she’s also wearing what we’re told are a great pair of jeans. Get it? Initially, people took umbrage with a video in which Sweeney lazily purrs, “My body’s composition is determined by my genes,” as the camera pushes in on her cleavage. “Hey! Eyes up here,” she then says with a smile. That video, which went viral on X thanks to a Sweeney fan page that is now private, currently exists only on Reddit, where the top comment reads “MY GOD, we get it! You have boobs! Congratulations on your breasts!”

While early criticisms of the campaign were that it banked too heavily on Sweeney’s sex appeal, things quickly got worse for American Eagle. A different video, which has also been removed from any American Eagle channels but lives on in screen recordings, features Sweeney lying on her back and buttoning her jeans. The camera pans up her body while we hear her in voice-over: “Genes are passed down from parents to offspring, often determining traits like hair color, personality, and even eye color. My jeans are blue.” Then a man’s voice tells us, “Sydney Sweeney has great jeans.”

What are people saying about the ads?

Well, they aren’t loving them. In a video that has more than 3 million views, TikTok user @midwesterngothic accused the company of making “fascist propaganda.” “A blonde haired, blue-eyed white woman is talking about her good genes, like, that is Nazi propaganda,” he said in his video. The phrase “Nazi propaganda” came up again in a short video from user @dewwwdropzzz, which has been viewed more than 5 million times.

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Some people also called out the brand for seemingly referencing Brooke Shields’s 1980 Calvin Klein ads, which also relied on jeans-genes wordplay. Shields was 15 when she shot those commercials and has since spoken out about the sexualization she experienced as an underage actress and model. At least one TikTok commenter called it “disrespectful” to Shields, and @midewesterngothic said, “Why are we referencing that? I thought we agreed that that was weird.”

On American Eagle’s own videos, the comments sections are now flooded with people accusing them of promoting eugenics and oversexualizing women. “AE promoting blonde and blue eye GENES we are germany,” wrote one commenter on a video of Sweeney wheat-pasting a poster of herself. “If not eugenics, why eugenics shaped,” another person wondered on a clip of Sweeney twirling in an all-denim outfit.

Wait, what’s this about a domestic-violence charity?

Right, so buried in all of the scandal is the fact that there’s a charitable aspect to this campaign. The brand is releasing “The Sydney Jean” and noted in a press release, “A butterfly motif on the back pocket of the jean represents domestic violence awareness, which Sydney is passionate about.” It added that 100 percent of the purchase price from these jeans will be going to Crisis Text Line, a nonprofit texting hotline that provides mental-health support.

How is this going for American Eagle?

If you can believe it, this campaign was initially kind of a hit for them. Their stock saw a bump after the video of Sweeney’s cleavage started going viral, thanks to (probably) horny meme-stock buyers. But now that eugenics allegations are in the mix, people in the comments are calling for a full-on boycott of the brand, saying that they’ll never buy from it again and that they’re switching to Levi’s.

Has Sweeney said anything about the controversy?

Not a peep. On Monday, she posted a photo of her manicure to her Instagram Stories, as though people hadn’t spent the whole weekend accusing her of starring in a commercial directed by Leni Riefenstahl. Representatives for Sweeney did not respond to a request for comment.

The American Eagle ad is the latest in a string of haphazard endorsements from Sweeney. The week before the American Eagle ads, she was the face of a sherbet-focused menu at Baskin Robbins; prior to that, there was the soap made with her bathwater. She’s also spent a good chunk of 2025 promoting Hey Dudes shoes, the Samsung Galaxy, Kerastase, Laneige, and Hellman’s mayonnaise. If she says nothing, will this blow over? Or are the people who work in the Oreos lab furiously trying to turn the Sydney Sweeney cookie into a Kaia Gerber one?