Sweeney’s ads promoting American Eagle denim products attracted immediate attention, but the online chatter swiftly shifted from the actress’s good looks to a debate over whether casting a blue-eyed blonde making puns about “great genes/jeans” was really a “Nazi dog whistle.” American Eagle has stood by their ad and muse, issuing a statement saying the ad campaign “is and always was about the jeans,” because “[g]reat jeans look good on everyone.” “Can we not be weird about Sydney Sweeney for 5 seconds?” lamented Vulture senior writer Nick Jones in a column that argued that “culture-war flare-ups rarely have much to do with the object that’s actually being discussed,” as Sweeney was “being held responsible” for a “MAGA-coded image” that “has little to do with anything that [the] actual Sydney Sweeney has said or done.” American Eagle has been in the national consciousness longer than the 27-year-old Sweeney, and gone through the ups and downs typical of a large retailer, but like Sweeney, the company has surged on Google Trends far past any previously measured peak.
Author: Sarah Rumpf
Published at: 2025-08-04 21:13:54
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