This week, American Eagle, which brought us baby tees and low-rise denim in the aughts, debuted an advertisement campaign starring actor Sydney Sweeney. Sweeney, 27, is featured doing all sorts of Americana things in her American Eagle denim — like leaning over the hood of a white Mustang or lying on the floor holding a long-haired German shepherd puppy. At the end of each video, an off-screen voice speaks over blocky letters declaring that Sweeney — blonde, blue-eyed and white — “has great jeans.” The wordplay was made even more explicit when American Eagle posted a video of Sweeney standing in front of a poster bearing her likeness with the word “genes” crossed out and replaced with “jeans.”
The internet has been quick to condemn the advertisement as noninclusive at best and as overtly promoting “white supremacy” and “Nazi propaganda” at worst.
The backlash has been swift and fierce, and some of it, at least, if you ask me, is fair. The internet has been quick to condemn the advertisement as noninclusive at best and as overtly promoting “white supremacy” and “Nazi propaganda” at worst. These critics point to the copy and the implication of calling a white person superior because of their genes. In the videos, Sweeney exudes a sort of vintage sexiness that caters to the male gaze. She embodies the near mythological girl-next-door beautiful but low-maintenance sexy femininity that dominated media in the 1990s and the early 2000s. Together, the campaign feels regressive and not retro, offensive and not cheeky.
The advertisement, the choice of Sweeney as the sole face in it and the internet’s reaction reflect an unbridled cultural shift toward whiteness, conservatism and capitalist exploitation. Sweeney is both a symptom and a participant.
A few weeks ago, I wrote a column about the rise and fall of another brand steeped in Americana: American Apparel. The column examined, in part, the role the now-shuttered company’s overtly sexual advertisements played in its success in the 2010s.
In both cases, American Apparel and, now, American Eagle, the cycle of outrage maintained or invigorated the company’s relevance. As we post, write, argue and engage, American Eagle is on a financial tear. It has earned controversial but lucrative status as a “meme stock,” a low-value stock that gains sudden popularity among retail investors. If the goal of paying for a high-profile advertising campaign is money and relevance, then by every metric this is a massive success for American Eagle.
Sweeney has been transparent that her goal as a public figure is to make as much money as possible. In an interview with British tabloid The Sun in 2023, she said: “I take deals because I have to. They don’t pay actors like they used to, and with streamers, you no longer get residuals. The established stars still get paid, but I have to give five per cent to my lawyer, ten per cent to my agents, three per cent or something like that to my business manager. I have to pay my publicist every month, and that’s more than my mortgage.”
In May, she faced viral controversy for selling Dr. Squatch soap that was advertised as containing some of her dirty bathwater. The advertisements, predictably, included Sweeney ostensibly naked in a bathtub. Last month, after she attended Jeff and Lauren Bezos’ gauche wedding in Italy, news spread that Sweeney was reportedly launching a lingerie brand with financial backing from the Bezoses. The internet was outraged, condemning Sweeney for aligning herself with American oligarchs like Bezos for a paycheck.
Sweeney, best known for playing a gratuitously topless Cassie on HBO’s “Euphoria,” has been sexualized for most of her career, including in many of her disparate business ventures and advertising campaigns, something she has also addressed. In an interview with The Independent, for example, she spoke to the double standard she faces: “When a guy has a sex scene or shows his body, he still wins awards and gets praise. But the moment a girl does it, it’s completely different.”
I cannot blame Sweeney for financially benefiting from a system that is going to exploit her either way. Still, her willingness to participate in such an obviously damaging — and, depending on who you ask, even dangerous — advertising campaign as the latest American Eagle collection is disappointing. Popular American culture is, indisputably, becoming more puritanical and more conservative. Advertisements, from American Apparel to the notorious Pepsi campaign with Kendall Jenner to a 1960s advertisement likening a new stove to a happy marriage, reflect what is pervasive in American culture at the time. Ads are always mirrors of society, and sometimes what they reflect is ugly and startling. Popular American culture is, indisputably, becoming more puritanical and more conservative. It isn’t just that far-right ideology is proliferating on the fringe; our entire cultural ethos has moved further right, allowing for this sort of content. Young women are being radicalized through so-called clean skin care and healthy eating, internet slang once used exclusively by women-hating incels is mainstream, and people are unabashedly self-identifying as fascist on public platforms. An advertisement that so many are condemning as a “eugenics dog whistle” fits into this movement. Sweeney and American Eagle deserve much scrutiny over this, but so does our own crumbling and fractured American culture that made this all possible in the first place.
Hannah Holland
Hannah Holland is a producer for MSNBC's "Velshi" and editor for the "Velshi Banned Book Club." She writes for MSNBC Daily. 
