Sydney Sweeney's 'great jeans': why American Eagle ad is so controversial

Sydney Sweeney has fronted a new American Eagle ad campaign, featuring tight jeans, retro visuals and one very questionable pun that seems to have sparked a culture war.

The video campaign sees the "Euphoria" star first referencing her inherited looks as "genes", before explaining her "jeans" are blue. The campaign slogan continues the play on words: "Sydney Sweeney Has Great Jeans".

'Parallels to alt-right ideals'

"On paper", Sweeney, an "all-American blonde", is the "ideal spokesperson" for the brand, said Fran Hoepfner in Vulture. But in a country where diversity initiatives are "under attack" and "mass deportations" occur daily, an advert on "how awesome it is to be white and blonde-haired and blue-eyed" comes across as "tasteless".

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It's "hard to ignore the parallels to alt-right ideals" and historical ideas about eugenics, with a play on the word "jeans/genes" and a focus on Sweeney's "stereotypically Aryan features", said Natalie Fear in Creative Bloq. Whether it's an "unfortunate choice of tone" or a veiled "dog whistle", it's puzzling that this advertisement was approved at all.

Whatever the campaign's intentions, the wider reaction to it clearly reflects an "unbridled cultural shift toward whiteness, conservatism and capitalist exploitation", said Hannah Holland on MSNBC. Advertisements are "mirrors of society", and "sometimes what they reflect can be ugly and startling".

'Stifling sanctimony'

The "woke outrage" is predictable but it's about time for a return to "American exceptionalism", where women can be "sultry, bold and unapologetically feminine", said Kelly Sadler in The Washington Times. While left-wing thinkpieces "blather on", trying to connect the ad to "neo-Nazis", there are some "irrefutable truths" that cannot be ignored: namely, that "men and women are attracted to each other", and that ads work best when they are "beautiful, aspirational or stylish".

Indeed, it is "hardly a revolutionary concept" that an attractive woman should be used by a fashion brand to sell merchandise, said Paul Burke in The Spectator. The "stifling sanctimony" of "pompous, po-faced pearl-clutchers" is frustrating at best, and claims the advertisement is being used to push "white supremacy" are "so vile, they're almost laughable". Sadly, this is something we must now expect from a "miserable movement in its death throes".

"Despite the backlash", stocks in American Eagle have jumped "20% over the past five days", said The Hill. Controversy may be the best-fitting marketing strategy of all.