American Eagle, Sydney Sweeney & a Tagline That Set the Internet on Fire

A pair of jeans, a blonde bombshell, and a slogan that stopped the scroll. The latest American Eagle campaign starring Euphoria’s Sydney Sweeney has everyone asking the same thing: marketing genius or PR trainwreck?

In the ad, Sweeney leans into low-rise denim with tousled hair, soft lighting, and a nostalgic, early-2000s vibe. So far, so Y2K. But then comes the tagline: “Sydney Sweeney has great genes.”

The internet? Instantly divided.

At first glance, it’s a simple jeans/genes pun. But in 2025, language doesn’t get to be simple. Critics immediately accused the brand of pushing white supremacist aesthetics, blonde, blue-eyed beauty framed as genetically superior. What was meant to be cheeky started reading as creepy, especially when paired with an actress who already has a complicated history with questionable ads.

Earlier this year, Sweeney made waves with a now-infamous bath soap campaign. Think milky water, candlelit tub, baby pink packaging, and a doll-like Sweeney staring dead into the camera as she dipped herself under like a porcelain mermaid. The internet immediately called it out for being “infantilizing,” “fetish-coded,” and “weirdly submissive.” It sold out anyway.

Now, with American Eagle, she’s back in another campaign that feels equally… confusing.
The jeans don’t quite fit. The shots feel awkward. And she’s using a breathy, vocal-fry-heavy voiceover that some viewers find flat-out grating. It’s supposed to appeal to women, but does it? The whole thing looks more like a male fantasy wrapped in nostalgia than a campaign made for the people actually buying the jeans.

And then there's the Brooke Shields connection. The American Eagle campaign clearly references the iconic Calvin Klein ads from the ‘80s, the ones where a 15-year-old Shields purrs “Nothing comes between me and my Calvins.” Those were also sexy, controversial, and obsessed over. They were also banned in multiple countries. So yeah, not exactly an unproblematic legacy to tap into..

Still, for all the backlash, there’s one undeniable truth: everyone’s talking about it.

Love it, hate it, cringe at it, the ad is everywhere. And maybe that’s the point. Maybe American Eagle wanted the outrage. In a media landscape where attention is the only real currency, "bad taste" might be the most effective marketing tool out there.

So: is it a flop? Or is it a very calculated, very chaotic win?

by Noémi Zak