Liberal media outlets argue Sydney Sweeney ‘Good Jeans' ad promoting ‘Whiteness,' ‘eugenics'

Fox News

29-07-2025

According to critics at outlets like The Washington Post and MSNBC, Sydney Sweeney's new American Eagle (AE) jeans ad is promoting racist and "regressive" themes.
In reports published by the Post, MSNBC, GMA and Salon, journalists scrutinized whether the "Euphoria" star and fashion brand were taking digs at the body positivity movement and subtly pushing "Whiteness" and "eugenics" in the culture.
"The advertisement, the choice of Sweeney as the sole face in it and the internet's reaction reflect an unbridled cultural shift toward Whiteness, conservatism and capitalist exploitation. Sweeney is both a symptom and a participant," MSNBC producer Hanna Holland wrote in an MSNBC.com column on Monday.
Sweeney's American Eagle ad campaign, titled "Sydney Sweeney Has Great Jeans," went viral on social media over the weekend for controversial reasons.
In one promo video posted to AE's Instagram page, the 27-year-old actress walked toward an AE billboard featuring her and the tagline "Sydney Sweeney Has Great Genes." Sweeney crossed out "Genes" and replaced it with "Jeans" before walking away.
AE's website also noted that a "butterfly motif on the back pocket of the jean represents domestic violence awareness, which Sydney is passionate about."
"In support of the cause, 100% of the purchase price from 'The Sydney Jean' will be donated to Crisis Text Line, a nonprofit offering free, 24/7, confidential mental health support to anyone in need—just text 741741," the site says.
Despite the jeans promoting a good cause, online critics were fixated on the ad's alleged White supremacist undertones.
Liberal outlets like Salon piled in on the backlash, with the outlet's weekend editor CK Smith linking the tagline of Sweeney's ad to "eugenics movements."
"Eugenics movements in the U.S. often promoted the idea of 'good genes' to encourage reproduction among White, able-bodied people while justifying the forced sterilization of others. Critics say those ideas still show up in modern advertising and influencer culture, often unexamined," Smith wrote on Sunday.
An analysis by Washington Post fashion critic Rachel Tashjian and the Post's media and fashion writer Shane O'Neil bolstered the claims made by the ad's online critics.
"For the past five or six years, it seemed like fashion and pop culture were very interested in — even dedicated to — body positivity. Now we're being fed a lot of images of thinness, Whiteness and unapologetic wealth porn, what with this campaign, influencers like Alix Earle and Sabrina Carpenter's album cover," Tashjian wrote.
She added, "But it is strange to see a brand like American Eagle go in this direction. Should teenagers be served a vision of sexuality and fashion that feels so regressive?"
O'Neil said the ad campaign reminded him of the Department of Homeland Security under President Donald Trump.
"The first thing I thought of when I heard the tagline 'Sydney Sweeney has great jeans' was the DHS Instagram account, which posted a subtly racist painting a few weeks ago and an explicitly racist painting last week," he said. "The latter depicted a gigantic blonde buxom woman chasing away Native people to make way for White settlers. When this is the imagery being promoted by our government, a pun about 'genes' hits differently."
On ABC's "GMA First Look" Tuesday, the show featured a clip of Kean University professor Robin Landa linking Sweeney's "good jeans" to the eugenics movement.
"The pun 'good jeans' activates troubling historical associations for this country. The American eugenics movement, in its prime between 1900 and 1940, weaponized the idea of good genes just to justify White supremacism," she said.
American Eagle did not immediately reply to Fox News Digital's request for comment.