Why Sweeney's American Eagle ad left me feeling blue

Right now, everyone is losing their minds over Sydney Sweeney's ad campaign for American Eagle denim. The 27-year-old actor who starred in Euphoria and The White Lotus has collaborated on a range of wide-legged jeans... and sparked global outrage.

- EMMA CLARKE

In her advert, she introduces the new Sydney Jeans by saying: “Genes are passed down from parents to offspring, often determining traits like hair colour, personality, and even eye colour.”

Once the camera has panned provocatively across the denim, as well as her blonde hair and her blue eyes, she declares: “My jeans are blue.”

In case you missed the not-so-subtle appeal to all-Americanness and the play on the word “jeans”, a voiceover then states: “Sydney Sweeney has great jeans.” In the clip, the word “genes” is crossed out and replaced with “jeans”, which The Atlantic dismissed as “a garden-variety dad pun”.

The campaign has sparked an almighty backlash - and a debate about race and beauty standards - with some claiming the phrase “great jeans”, coupled with Sweeney’s references to her hair and eye colour, recall white supremacy and eugenics, the discredited, racist belief once popularised by the Nazis that the human race can be improved through selective breeding.

The backlash was swift. Grammy-winning musician Doja Cat was seemingly so incensed by the ad that she recreated it, reciting Sweeney’s words in an exaggerated southern US accent, and changing the slogan to: “My jeans are blee.”

Sayantani DasGupta, senior lecturer in the discipline of narrative medicine at Columbia University, is in no doubt that the ad is imbued with eugenic messaging. “A woman of colour would not have been hired for this advertisement,” she says.