Sydney Sweeney’s recent ad collaboration with the renowned clothing and accessories retailer, American Eagle, has landed her in controversy again. The global brand recently released a series of advertisements featuring the actress, which have since drawn massive backlash from the general public, causing many to search ‘What Did Sydney Sweeney Do?’ on the internet.
Sydney Sweeney faces backlash over new ad
A few days back, American Eagle published several iterations of ads with the Anyone But You star promoting their jeans in them. In one commercial, she approaches a billboard of the said brand and paints over the wall, altering the tagline ‘Sydney Sweeney has great genes’ by replacing the term ‘genes’ with ‘jeans.’
Another one sees Sydney Sweeney buttoning up her jeans as the camera pans from her legs to her face. She once again plays on the homophone nature of the words ‘jeans’ and ‘genes.’ Since the ads caught public attention, many have called the actress out for agreeing to do an advertisement that can have a potentially insensitive message about racism.
One TikTok creator summarized the supposed problem with the ads in her video. She said, “Should we be surprised that a company whose name is literally American Eagle, is making fascist propaganda like this? Probably not, but it’s still really shocking, like a blonde-haired, blue-eyed woman is talking about her good genes, like that is N–i propaganda.”
American Eagle’s marketing strategy tries to play around with the terms ‘genes’ and ‘jeans’ to promote their new denim campaign. However, the phrase ‘great genes’ has historically been used to celebrate whiteness, thinness, and therefore, a particular style of attractiveness.
As such, people seem to have called American Eagle and Sydney Sweeney for their supposed ignorance in going ahead with an ad tagline that could potentially encourage discrimination. This has resulted in the phrase, “What did Sydney Sweeney do?” landing on the trends charts.
Meanwhile, the Euphoria star has yet to comment on her recent controversy.
Originally reported by Apoorv Rastogi on ComingSoon.net.
