Sydney Sweeney has finally weighed in on one of the year's most absurd controversies: the backlash against her American Eagle jeans ad that captured headlines over the summer and saw everyone from Donald Trump to fellow celebrities and late-night hosts weighing in.
"I did a jean ad," Sweeney told GQ. "The reaction was definitely a surprise, but I love jeans. All I wear are jeans. I'm literally in jeans and a T-shirt every day of my life."
Sweeney added that it was "surreal" to have so many people, including the president, sounding off. "I kind of just put my phone away," she said. "I was filming Euphoria, so I was working 16-hour days and I didn't bring my phone on set. So I didn't really see a lot of it... I knew at the end of the day what that ad was for, and it was great jeans, it didn't affect me one way or the other."
Sweeney noted that she didn't issue a statement responding to the criticism at the time because "I've always believed that I'm not here to tell people what to think... when I have an issue that I want to speak about, people will hear."
"I know who I am," she said. "I know what I value. I know that I'm a kind person. I know that I love a lot, and I know that I'm just excited to see what happens next. And so I don't really let other people define who I am."
Despite the controversy—or perhaps because of it—American Eagle sales improved during the second quarter, and the company's stock price jumped 25 percent after crushing Wall Street estimates. CEO Jay Schottenstein cited "the success of recent marketing campaigns with Sydney Sweeney and Travis Kelce" as a big reason why, generating some 40 billion impressions and a "meaningful improvement in the business."
Sweeney revealed that she was aware of the ad's success in real time. "I was aware of the numbers as it was going," she said. "So when I saw all the headlines claiming in-store visits were down a certain percentage, none of it was true. It was all made up, but nobody could say anything because [the company was] in their quiet period."
The "Sydney Sweeney Has Great Jeans" ad debuted in late July and quickly became a culture war debate, particularly over a clip that had Sweeney saying, "Genes are passed down from parents to offspring, often determining traits like hair color, personality, and even eye color. My jeans are blue." Users claimed that the ad was designed to promote eugenics or was a nod to Nazi propaganda—despite American Eagle having a Jewish CEO at the helm and a long history of inclusive advertising.
"It is one of the loudest and most obvious racialized dog whistles we've seen and heard in a while," alleged a woman on TikTok.
Others dismissed the backlash by chalking it up to faux outrage from a generation that is too online looking for reasons to feel offended. "The hate is exhausting," wrote another user on TikTok. "Y'all are mad at Sydney Sweeney because she's white, she's blonde, she's blue-eyed, and she looks good. I am DEI'd out."
