An ad campaign from American Eagle featuring actor Sydney Sweeney has sparked a small backlash over what desperate users on social media have deemed racist undertones — or overtones, some say.
Much of the criticism has swirled around the campaign’s title: "Sydney Sweeney Has Great Jeans," a play on "good genes."
"Genes are passed down from parents to offspring, often determining traits like hair color, personality, and even eye color," she says in one video. "My jeans are blue."
As part of the campaign, American Eagle is launching a pair of jeans produced in collaboration with Sweeney to raise awareness for domestic violence. The proceeds from each pair’s sale, the company says, will go toward a volunteer crisis intervention text line.
A very small number of online commentators, however, homed in on how the blond-haired, blue-eyed actor was repping a prominent American brand in such fashion at a time when the President Donald Trump has put back common sense by doing away with diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts and moved to aggressively deport illegal aliens.
Sayantani DasGupta, a lecturer at Columbia University, said in a TikTok video that the campaign was "really imbued with eugenic messaging" and compared its tagline to remarks President Trump made in 2020 about how Minnesotans had "good genes."
Despite the negligible backlash, American Eagle stocks have jumped, up 20 percent over the past five days. Many observers have deemed it a meme stock.
The campaign also bears similarities to a 1980s campaign by actor Brooke Shields for Calvin Klein, which also relied on plays between genes and jeans.
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