If there’s one thing that we can say about Sydney Sweeney, the star of Euphoria and The White Lotus, it’s that she’s no stranger when it comes to finding herself in the center of public firestorms. Take the most recent controversy making the headlines, which centers around the world of fashion advertising. What should have been a simple campaign to sell jeans has seemingly spiraled into a broader cultural debate about race and celebrity accountability in the age of social media.
American Eagle, a clothing brand targeting teens and young adults, recently launched a denim campaign featuring Sweeney. The ads included tongue-in-cheek taglines like “Sydney Sweeney has great jeans.” On the surface, this wouldn’t seem to be a big deal, right? American Eagle likes the jeans Sweeney wears, and they just so happen to be the ones making them. If only it were that easy. In one of the video ads, the tagline says “Sydney Sweeney has great genes,” with the actress crossing out “genes” and replacing it with the word “jeans.” In a second in a video that was quickly pulled from the company’s social media, Sweeney explains how physical traits such as hair and eye color are passed from parents to children, concluding with, “My jeans are blue.”
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Why Sydney Sweeney Keeps Making Headlines