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.
‘What Did Sydney Sweeney Do?’ trend explained
American Eagle recently published several iterations of ads featuring the Anyone but You star promoting their jeans. In one ad, she approaches a billboard of the said brand and paints over the wall, altering the tagline “Sydney Sweeney has great genes” by replacing the word “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 similarity between 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 race.
One TikTok creator summarized the problem with the ads in a video saying, “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 Nazi 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 a result, many commenters have criticized American Eagle and Sydney Sweeney for using a tagline that could potentially encourage discrimination. This has resulted in the phrase, “What did Sydney Sweeney do?” landing on the trends charts.
The Euphoria star has yet to comment on the recent controversy.
