A top White House communications official responded to critics of American Eagle’s ad starring actress Sydney Sweeney, calling their critiques of the campaign “warped” and “moronic” in a post on social media this week.
White House communications director Steven Cheung wrote on X that claims that the ad contains harmful racial subtext are a sign of “cancel culture run amok” and an example of why voters chose to reelect President Trump in last year’s election.
What started out as a buzzy commercial starring one of Hollywood’s most in-demand actresses has quickly spiraled into a sprawling debate over sex, race, politics and American culture as a whole.
How did a single 30-second advertisement create such a stir? Here’s how we got here.
What is the ad?
The ad, or more accurately series of ads, are built around the tagline “Sydney Sweeney has great jeans” — a play on words that conflates American Eagle denim with the genetic traits that gave Sweeney her famously voluptuous figure.
Some of the spots are more direct, specifically talking about her genetic background.
“Genes are passed down from parents to offspring, often determining traits like hair color, personality, and even eye color,” Sweeney says in one clip. “My jeans are blue.”
Sweeney has been a very successful partner for a variety of brands since she became one of the breakout stars of HBO’s teen drama Euphoria in 2019. For example, earlier this year, the 27-year-old actress drew huge attention to a little-known soap company called Dr. Squatch by selling bars of soap that had been mixed with her personal bathwater.
Depending on who you ask, the American Eagle ads are just another example of a brand capitalizing on Sweeney’s star power to connect with consumers — or they’re a modern-day example of offensive race-based messaging.
What were the criticisms?
Criticism of the ads from online commentators started to pour in almost immediately after American Eagle posted the first video online last week. The nature of the comments varies, but in general, the primary complaint is that the ad — which celebrates the genes/jeans of a white, blonde, blue-eyed actress — sends a message that certain types of heritage are better than others.
“It’s saying that Sydney Sweeney has a great body, and therefore great genes and is therefore a product of genetic superiority,” content creator Jess Britvich said in a video on TikTok that has been viewed nearly 3 million times.
Other social media users have gone so far as to call the ad Nazi propaganda or a means of promoting white supremacy.
As the debate gained steam, cultural commentators at some of America’s biggest news outlets started to weigh in with their own more nuanced takes.
“She embodies the near mythological girl-next-door beautiful but low-maintenance sexy femininity that dominated media in the 1990s and the early 2000s,” MSNBC producer Hannah Holland wrote. “Together, the campaign feels regressive and not retro, offensive and not cheeky.”
And what is the criticism to the criticism?
Cheung isn’t the only figure on the political right to condemn the ad’s critics. Republican Sen. Ted Cruz reacted on X, writing “Now the crazy Left has come out against beautiful women. I’m sure that will poll well….”
In the eyes of many conservatives, the response to Sweeney’s ad is a quintessential example of what they see as the left’s extreme hypersensitivity on even the most anodyne subjects.
“A blond, blue-eyed actress talking about jeans — or even genes — is just a pun, not a secret salute to white supremacy,” New York Times opinion writer John McWhorter wrote on Tuesday.
Popular conservative commentator Charlie Kirk blasted what he called the “ridiculous overreaction” to an ad that, he believes, is “nowhere close to offensive.”
Why is this even an issue?
The American Eagle ad controversy has sparked the deeper question about whether this is the sort of thing we, as a culture, should be fighting about at all. In the eyes of some commentators, the entire episode is a troubling symptom of how even largely unimportant things like a commercial for jeans get drawn into a never-ending cycle of outrage in which the opportunity for substantive discussion becomes impossible.
“What ends up happening in these scenarios is that everyone gets very mad, in a way that allows for a touch of moral superiority and is also good for creating online content,” Charlie Warzel, a staff writer for the Atlantic, wrote on Tuesday. “The Sweeney ad, like any good piece of discourse, allows everyone to exploit a political and cultural moment for different ends.”
