Blue Denim, Red Flags: Why the Sydney Sweeney x American Eagle Jeans Campaign is Giving… Eugenics?
Well, well, well darlings… What a couple of weeks it has been, AI in Vogue, Trump being Trump, and looks like American Eagle wanted to sell us denim, and somehow we ended up in a 1930s political pamphlet. American Eagle’s recent campaign starring Euphoria breakout Sydney Sweeney couldn’t have launched into stormier waters. Conventionally attractive blonde, blue eyed white woman? Check. Wholesome Americana aesthetic? Check. Denim as the star? Check. Check. Check. But the internet, never one to let a suspicious vibe go unchecked, started whispering the E-word: eugenics. And honestly? Once you look at the imagery… you see why.
The tagline, carelessly punning on “jeans” and “genes,” paired with Sweeney’s blonde hair and blue eyes, ignited accusations of eugenic undertones and racial messaging. Critics pointed out that praising “great genes” taps into historical rhetoric of white genetic purity, echoing theories from early 20th-century American eugenics to Nazi—oh yeah, the other N-word—ideology. Comments warning of “Aryan-coded images” and “pro-eugenic politics” flooded social platforms. Scholars like Sayantani DasGupta called the ad disturbingly “imbued with eugenic messaging.”
Yeah… so, let’s just say denim has taken a dark turn in this part of history. Funny thing is I don’t think I remember ordering such dark pairs.
The Political Stitching You Can’t Ignore
Let’s quickly go back in time for a few minutes, for those who have missed this in history lesson, eugenics was the deeply disturbing, pseudo-scientific movement that advocated for "improving" human genetics—often linked to racial purity, classism, and deeply sexist ideas of who should be allowed to reproduce (disgusting, but that shouldn’t be surprising). The Sydney Sweeney campaign, with its Stepford styling, and retro fertility-adjacent undertones, has been accused by critics of echoing that imagery.
And here’s the irony that takes it from problematic to absurd: the campaign was apparently tied to raising money for domestic violence causes. Yes, you read that right. They wanted to fight misogyny… using visuals that accidentally romanticize some of its darkest historical roots. Girl, don’t look at me like that. I didn't write the script of this messed up ad. The “Sydney Jean” featured a butterfly symbol on its back pocket, and 100% of proceeds were pledged to Crisis Text Line. Mkay…
Before we completely drag denim into the gallows, let’s remember its history for women is actually one of rebellion. In the early 20th century, women wearing jeans was scandalous. Jeans were men’s workwear, and for women to adopt them was a direct challenge to gender norms. Rosie the Riveter’s rolled-up denim cuffs? Feminist iconography. Marilyn Monroe in River of No Return? Sexual liberation meets blue cotton twill.
By the 1970s, jeans became a symbol of counterculture—worn by feminists, activists, and rock stars alike. In other words, denim was once the enemy of patriarchal dress codes. Now? It’s being dressed up in prairie-dream nostalgia and marketed back to us with questionable subtext. Oh, capitalism, you tricky little bastard.
Timeline, because why not?
1930s–40s: Hollywood cowgirls like Ginger Rogers and Marlene Dietrich popularized jeans for women, but they were still coded as masculine and subversive.
1960s–70s: Denim became unisex and political—a garment of the counterculture, civil rights activists, and second-wave feminists.
1990s–2000s: Low-rise jeans and hyper-sexualized denim ads dominated, thanks to brands like Guess and Calvin Klein.
Now: Jeans are a gender-neutral staple, but they carry the ghosts of their political past—meaning campaigns like this one aren’t born in a vacuum.
Sydney Sweeney, Politics & the Public Gaze
The controversy only intensified with political ink attached. Sweeney was revealed to be a registered Republican, which fueled partisan interpretations of the ad. Following conservative praise—including from President Trump and Vice President JD Vance the discourse split along ideological lines. American Eagle’s stock soared between 10–23% amid the swirling debate.
Notably, Lizzo responded with humor—dropping a lyric, “I got good jeans like I’m Sydney,” reclaiming self-definition while mocking the tone-deaf trope, even Doja Cat mocked the actress with a stereotypical Southern accent in a TikTok video.
Photo: EW
Beyoncé and the Levi’s “Eugenics” Reach
And then there was the truly hilarious attempt to paint Beyoncé’s denim collaboration with Levi’s as some sort of eugenics plot. Excuse me? My Queen proceeding to release the same advert with Levi’s for the umpteenth instead of visuals is one thing—dragging her into this dusty PR mess is another. As if Beyonce—Black, Texan, and fully in control of her cultural narrative—was going to accidentally serve up a “master race” aesthetic in the middle of Cowboy Carter season. Nice try, conspiracy Twitter.
Her denim? Rooted in Black Southern cowboy heritage. Her aesthetic? Afrofuturism in indigo. The idea that she’d casually cosign a campaign flirting with whitewashed Americana aesthetics? Laughable. Keep Beyoncé’s name out of your weird historical revisionism, please.
The Calvin Klein Callback Nobody Asked For
If the American Eagle campaign already felt off, the real kicker is that it’s a direct homage to Calvin Klein’s infamous 1980 ads starring a 15-year-old Brooke Shields. In those commercials, Shields, in skin-tight denim, looked into the camera and purred, “You want to know what comes between me and my Calvins? Nothing.” The ads were immediately criticized for overtly sexualizing a minor — and that was in 1980, when pop culture was far less sensitive to such issues than today.
Photo: ASAA
Sydney Sweeney is not some blissfully unaware model plucked from obscurity — she’s a Hollywood actress with a deep film and fashion vocabulary. She knows who Brooke Shields is. She knows the ad’s cultural baggage. And yet, she and American Eagle chose to lean into that exact aesthetic and cadence, sensual delivery included. It’s not a wink — it’s a full-on recreation.
This isn’t Sydney’s first homage to problematic source material either. She previously recreated imagery inspired by Lolita — yes, Vladimir Nabokov’s novel about an adult man’s sexual obsession with a 12-year-old girl, later turned into films that visually doubled down on the male gaze. The original text was never meant to be a cutesy style reference, but fashion and pop culture have a bad habit of divorcing Lolita from its disturbing context to create “sexy schoolgirl” aesthetics. Sydney, by deliberately echoing those visuals in a photoshoot, leaned into that tradition without challenging it.
When you line it all up — the Brooke Shields nod, the Lolita reference, and now the prairie-core eugenics-adjacent American Eagle imagery — a troubling throughline emerges. It’s not just “oops, bad optics.” It’s a consistent pattern of romanticizing aesthetics tied to the sexualization of underage girls, then rebranding them as edgy, knowing homages.
Photo: NewsBreak
Surprise? Not Even a Little
Honestly, am I shocked that Sweeney is behind this? Nope. She hasn’t done anything remotely standout (love to hate on Euphoria, but…) since then. Plus, there was that MAGA-hat moment at her mother’s birthday party—“Make 60 Great Again”—which she tried to laugh off as “misinterpretation”. It's consistent branding: pretty, provocative, and politically static. So, shock is beyond me at this point, however what disgusts me is the audacity of thinking that this would have been gracefully received during this political climate. For anyone that has no media literacy this could be seen as harmless, but as I have mentioned before this ad campaign presents a lot more than what an ignorant conservative would think (hello, Magyn Kelly). It is undeniably dangerous how someone as famous as Sydney Sweeney is basically approving what the far-right ideologies continue to radically brainwash people with, especially when her only source of fame ‘Euphoria’ tries—but I can definitely debate its success— to advocate a socialist society. Furthermore, American Eagle, instead of having a range of different actors pertaining to different backgrounds and showcasing that “all jeans are good genes,” you chose the most basic white girl in Hollywood—that definitely voted for Trump—to star in this campaign while trying to advocate for domestic violence? On top of that you are oversexualising her too?
Photo: WWD
Conclusion
Fashion is never “just clothes.” Every stitch, every backdrop, every choice of model/actress is loaded with cultural meaning—sometimes deliberate, sometimes accidental. The Sydney Sweeney x American Eagle ad is a masterclass in how aesthetic nostalgia can purposely stumble into political minefields. And while we could laugh it off as “just jeans,” it’s worth asking:
When we romanticise and normalise certain versions of the past, whose past are we actually selling?
XOXO, The Fashion Stock Market
Cover Photo: Euronews
Editor: Annaliese Persaud
