Been on TikTok or Insta recently? You’re probably one of the millions drowning in Sydney Sweeney’s jeans (oh, and her actual genes). Following an American Eagle advertisement roll-out, the ‘Euphoria’ actress has brought eugenics into the wardrobe. So what’s this denim-dilemma really about – is it another case of empty ragebait, or has Sweeney really done it this time? 

Denim and eugenics?? Explain! 

Well, let’s go back to the start. Clothing company American Eagle has been working on an advertising campaign for a little while now. The campaign officially landed on 23 July 2025, when the slogan "Sydney Sweeney has great jeans" painted storefronts, appeared on television, and – as is often most important these days – exploded on social media. The roll-out saw short videos of the 27-year-old ‘Euphoria’ and ‘Anyone But You’ actress as she lazed about in denim, uttering phrases in that pouty, submissive, somewhat childish drawl of hers – if you know, you know. From there, it’s been an all-out culture war.

You had me until “culture-war” 

The ad ruffled the typical groups on the internet: “conservative aggregators, business world influencers, celebrity stan accounts, and libs who won’t leave the site”, as The Guardian named them. Pitting these groups against each other is a sure-fire way to create chaos online – a “culture war” – and the campaign did just that. But what senseless fights were stirred, the pointing towards Sweeney’s blurred line of demeaning male egos, and inflating them, quickly rose to the surface.

Is it really always about sex? 

It’s no secret that Sweeney has been caught in her fair share of scandals since her breakout role in ‘Euphoria’ in 2019; you’d think the media would let up on the poor girl by now. Yet somehow, something is still slightly off about the character she’s creating off the big screen. Earlier this year, the actress worked in collaboration with Dr. Squatch to release a limited-edition soap evocatively labelled ‘Sydney’s Bathwater Bliss’. That would be fine except the product was alleged to contain a “touch” of her actual bathwater. Yeah… took a while for people to let that go, particularly those outraged by the toxic ideal of womanhood Sweeney continues to lean into.

How could a bar of soap leave such a stain? 

It doesn’t help that as soon as Sweeney’s PR team scrubbed their way out of the sexist, conservative, borderline predatory claims being directed at the actress’s choice of media deals, the American Eagle ad dropped her right back in the dirt again. Similar evocative phrases were tied to the denim campaign, with American Eagle posting captions such as ‘Master of tension… and engines’ and ‘I bet you wanna try these jeans’ beneath photos of the actress with her legs spread and buttons popped. The issue doesn’t lie in the actress’ poses, nor the styling of her clothes, but rather in the persistent choice of demographic for these campaigns: men – and we’re not just talking male gaze anymore: this is insatiable male gluttony.

So… Can we go back to the eugenics part of this? 

Sadly, we can. The pairing of blue-eyed, blonde-haired, white-skinned Sweeney with the slogan “Sydney Sweeney has good genes” has sparked accusations of dog-whistling and eugenic propaganda. Eugenics, if it’s defined as the process of orchestrating reproduction in accordance with “heritable characteristics regarded as desirable”, does seem to be at play here. Whether or not this was intended by Sweeney or the creative directors behind the campaign has become moot: the discussion is now around why this type of ad was allowed to play out. 

Well… why was this type of ad allowed to play out? 

If only this debate were so simple! An answer that seems to be sticking amidst the flurry of noise is that this is a top-down issue in the industry: People-Of-Colour (POC) aren’t given enough authoritative roles and aren’t empowered to interfere with such problematic scripting. For those defending Sweeney, suggesting she also doesn’t have a say in the direction of the ad, arguments have surfaced that she in fact, does have autonomy to remove herself from problematic advertisements; she just couldn’t see the issue – thereby affirming why we need to stop employing majority white, cis creatives in directorial roles. What’s worse here? The ad has also been quite reasonably compared to a 1980s Calvin Klein campaign, which features a then-15-year-old Brooke Shields. You just can’t make this stuff up. With the sexualisation of Sweeney’s 17-year-old character in ‘Euphoria’, Cassie Howard, and the actress voiced frustrations about feeling “ostracised” for having “boobs before the other girls”, this continuation of the exploitation of minors clings to the American Eagle advert. Sweeney might be 27 years old now, but the popular-girl-in-high-school tone she uses in several of the campaign’s clips isn’t doing much to distance herself from these concerns…

So what’s come of all this? 

As all good internet controversies go, not a whole lot. The debate around if feminism has killed itself continues, the demand to end POC censorship in the arts wages wearily onwards, and somehow American Eagle shares have gone up 24% (the villain takes it all?). Oh, and Donald Trump has wrapped himself in the denim dilemma – of course – tweeting that Sweeney’s ad is the “HOTTEST ad out there”, ending the tweet with “go get ‘em, Sydney”. Despite the constant whiplash we’re all suffering with these never-ending celebrity controversies, one thing will always be constant: Trump posting the weakest take with even weaker grammar to back it up.

Well, that was exhausting. Who’s excited to rip off their jeans and put some trackies on?

Ebony Casagrande is a student at UNSW studying a Bachelor of Media and Arts. She always drives with the windows down and really loves the colour orange. Her hopes in life are to swim in all 5 oceans, to write some books, and for everyone to know she went to a Chappell Roan concert before she was cool.