American eagle's 'good jeans' ads with sydney sweeney spark a debate on race and beauty standards

US fashion retailer American Eagle Outfitters aimed for a big impact with its new ad campaign starring actor Sydney Sweeney. The campaign included clever and provocative language, intending to push boundaries, according to the company’s chief marketing officer. The question now is whether the public reaction to the denim campaign is what American Eagle intended. Titled “Sydney Sweeney has great jeans,” the campaign sparked debate about race, Western beauty standards, and the backlash against woke American politics and culture.

Much of the negative reception focused on videos that used the word “genes” instead of “jeans” when discussing the blonde-haired, blue-eyed actor known for the HBO series “Euphoria” and “White Lotus.” Some critics interpreted the wordplay as a nod, intentional or unintentional, to eugenics, a discredited theory that humanity could be improved through selective breeding. Marcus Collins, an assistant professor of marketing at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business, suggested the criticism could have been avoided by including models of various races making the “genes” pun. Collins said, “You can either say this was ignorance, or this was laziness, or say that this is intentional.” Other commenters on social media accused detractors of overanalyzing the campaign’s message.

For all the latest headlines, follow our Google News channel online or via the app.

Megyn Kelly, former Fox News host, wrote on X, “I love how the leftist meltdown over the Sydney Sweeney ad has only resulted in a beautiful white blonde girl with blue eyes getting 1000x the exposure for her good genes.” American Eagle did not respond to requests for comment. The ad campaign comes as the retailer grapples with sluggish consumer spending and higher costs from tariffs. In late May, American Eagle reported that total sales were down 5 percent for its February-April quarter compared to the previous year. A day after Sweeney was announced as the company’s latest celebrity collaborator, American Eagle’s stock closed up more than 4 percent. The company’s shares were trading nearly 2 percent on Wednesday.

Like many trendy clothing brands, American Eagle needs to differentiate itself with a famous face or by saying something edgy, according to Alan Adamson, co-founder of marketing consultancy Metaforce. Adamson compared the Sweeney campaign to Calvin Klein jeans ads from 1980 featuring a 15-year-old Brooke Shields. Chief Marketing Officer Craig Brommers told Retail Brew that “Sydney is the biggest get in the history of American Eagle,” and the company planned a fitting promotion. The campaign features videos of Sweeney wearing slouchy jeans in various settings. Her image will appear on 3-D billboards in Times Square and elsewhere, on Snapchat, and in an AI-enabled try-on feature. American Eagle also plans to launch a limited-edition Sydney jean to raise awareness of domestic violence and donate the sales proceeds to the nonprofit Crisis Text Line. In a news release, the company noted Sweeney’s “girl next door charm” and “main character energy.”

In one video, Sweeney approaches an American Eagle billboard of herself with the tagline “Sydney Sweeney has great genes,” then crosses out “genes” and replaces it with “jeans.” A teaser video showed Sweeney saying, “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 appeared on American Eagle’s Facebook page but is not part of the official campaign. While remarking that someone has “good genes” is sometimes a compliment, the phrase also has sinister connotations. Eugenics gained popularity in the early 20th century, and Nazi Germany embraced it to carry out Adolf Hitler’s plan for an Aryan master race. Civil rights activists have noted signs of eugenics regaining a foothold through the far right’s promotion of the “great replacement theory,” a racist ideology alleging a conspiracy to diminish the influence of white people.

Shalini Shankar, a cultural and linguistic anthropologist at Northwestern University, said she had problems with American Eagle’s “genes” versus “jeans” campaign because it exacerbates a limited concept of beauty. “American Eagle, I guess, wants to rebrand itself for a particular kind of white privileged American,” Shankar said. “And that is the kind of aspirational image they want to circulate for people who want to wear their denim.” Many critics compared the American Eagle ad to a misstep by Pepsi in 2017. Pepsi released a TV ad that showed model Kendall Jenner offer a can of soda to a police officer while ostensibly stepping away from a photo shoot to join a crowd of protesters. Viewers mocked the spot for appearing to trivialize protests of police killings of Black people. Pepsi apologized and pulled the ad.

The demonstrations following the 2020 killing of George Floyd by a white police officer in Minneapolis pushed many US companies to make their advertising better reflect consumers of all races. Jazmin Burrell, founder of brand consulting agency Lizzie Della Creative Strategies, said she’s noticed more ads and signs that prominently feature white models. “I can see us going back to a world where diversity is not really the standard expectation in advertising,” Burrell said. American Eagle has been praised for diverse marketing in the past, including creating a denim hijab in 2017. Its Aerie lingerie brand was recognized for creating a wide range of sizes. A year ago, the company released a limited-edition denim collection with tennis player Coco Gauff. The retailer has an ongoing diversity, equity, and inclusion program primarily geared toward employees. Two days before announcing the Sweeney campaign, American Eagle named the latest recipients of its scholarship award for employees who are driving anti-racism, equality, and social justice initiatives.

Marketing experts offer mixed opinions on whether the attention surrounding “good jeans” will be good for business. “They were probably thinking that this is going to be their moment,” said Myles Worthington, the founder and CEO of marketing and creative agency WORTHI. “But this is doing the opposite and deeply distorting their brand.” Melissa Murphy, a marketing professor at Carnegie Mellon University’s Tepper School of Business, said she liked certain parts of the campaign but hoped it would be expanded to showcase people besides Sweeney for the sake of the brand. Other experts say the buzz is good, even if it’s not uniformly positive. “If you try to follow all the rules, you’ll make lots of people happy, but you’ll fail,” Adamson said. “The rocket won’t take off.”