Then, the subsequent revelation that Sweeney had joined the Republican Party the day after Trump was convicted as a felon further excited onlookers. Most of all, Trump.
“She’s a registered Republican?” asked Trump. “Oh, now I love her ad.”
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American Eagle shares leapt up 24 per cent after Trump said in a social media post that it was the “HOTTEST ad out there” and that the jeans were “flying off the shelves”. This is the greatest bump for the brand since 2000. “Go get ’em Sydney!” said Trump.
But the question for those who objected to the ad, elevated it, reposted it, dissected it, churned outrage through our feeds, is what they were trying to achieve. Yep, the ad is creepy and has a strong whiff of eugenics – but the outcome seems to have been profit for the brand they’re seeking to discredit. In an attention economy, surely the important question is what we pay attention to.
Not that it’s wrong to criticise the ad, nor to point out the racist overtones – especially given this is a time of real erosion of DEI in Hollywood and elsewhere – but you’d have to question devoting so much time to something that plays into the marketer’s hands.
On the Ruthless podcast, J.D. Vance said: “My political advice to the Democrats is continue to tell everybody who thinks Sydney Sweeney is attractive is a Nazi. That appears to be their actual strategy.”
“I mean, it actually reveals something pretty interesting about the Dems, though, which is that you have, like, a normal all-American beautiful girl doing like a normal jeans ad … and they have managed to so unhinge themselves over this thing. And it’s like, you guys, did you learn nothing from the November 2024 election?”
Honestly, apart from his lack of acknowledgment of the ad’s actual connotations, it’s a fair point. Even the fact that Sweeney’s dog is a German Shepherd has been leapt upon as a latent sign of Nazism.
When I asked my ABC colleague Jeremy Fernandez about this story this week on the Not Stupid podcast, he said: “As a brown person, this doesn’t look any different to the undercurrent of any other denim ad that I’ve seen. Think of brands like Tommy Hilfiger, Abercrombie and Fitch; ‘beautiful white people’.
“To me this might seem like a bit of a storm in a teacup because it’s really just putting words out there for what has always been there. They are just saying it out loud. I’ve noticed this for years. It’s a well-known marketing trope.
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“Is it uncomfortable? Yeah. Is a bit – ugh? Yeah. But I don’t know if the scale of the reaction to this particular ad belies the fact that this has gone on since the dawn of marketing.”
Lots of other marketing campaigns are race-based, he says. “There are some people who found it really offensive, and I can appreciate their point of view. But it is Marketing 101. I don’t find it particularly surprising.”
Which is probably why The New Yorker called it a “banal provocation”. Doreen St Felix wrote that the outrage quickly “dissipated into a bored fatigue”.
To Jeremy’s point, another ad has since come out with a white person boasting about superior genes. At which point you’d have to agree with Kathleen Newman-Bremang, who wrote in Refinery29 that it’s time to “say the quiet part out loud: bragging about white people’s genetics in the year 2025 is fucking weird. I don’t care what you’re promoting.”
In response to it all, and doubtless rubbing their hands in glee, American Eagle issued a statement on social media: “‘Sydney Sweeney Has Great Jeans’ is and always was about the jeans. Her jeans. Her story.” The company said it would to celebrate how everyone wears its jeans “with confidence, their way”.
“Great jeans look good on everyone,” America Eagle pronounced.
Sure. It’s just that we’re told, again and again, that they look a heck of a lot better on Sydney Sweeney, who just happens to have white skin and blue eyes. Such a coincidence.
Julia Baird is a journalist, author and regular columnist.
