American Eagle has responded to the widespread backlash over its ads featuring actor Sydney Sweeney, but noticeably missing from the brand’s statement was an apology or any real acknowledgement of how so many people interpreted the ads.
The company, as well as Sweeney, have come under fire since the release of a new ad campaign that features the “Euphoria” actor saying that genes are “passed down from parents to offspring, often determining traits like hair color, personality and even eye color,” and “my jeans are blue.”
Many people believe the wordplay in the campaign, which features the tagline “Sydney Sweeney has great jeans,” promotes the idea that Eurocentric features are more valuable and desirable.
In response, American Eagle released a statement on Friday on Instagram defending its campaign. ”‘Sydney Sweeney Has Great Jeans’ is and always was about the jeans. Her jeans. Her story,” the statement read. “We’ll continue to celebrate how everyone wears their AE jeans with confidence, their way. Great jeans look good on everyone.”
American Eagle’s posted statement spurred a wide range of reactions in the comment section. Many criticized the brand for ignoring the fact that it had clearly used “jeans” as a double entendre for “genes.”
“So now ‘jeans’ are passed down from parents to offspring?” one commenter wrote, adding, “it was never about jeans.”
“So what is the correlation between Jeans and eye color again?” wrote another.
Others celebrated the company for its unapologetic tone, saying American Eagle’s response indicated the end of the “woke era” because the brand didn’t cave to a “liberal meltdown.”
“Don’t cater to the woke — keep making great denim AE,” one Instagram user wrote.
American Eagle did not immediately respond to HuffPost’s request for comment on the mixed responses to its statement on Instagram.
But the discourse surrounding the American Eagle/Sweeney controversy has been largely divided along political lines. Prominent conservatives like former Fox News host Megyn Kelly and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) have passionately defended the campaign, despite critics’ concerns that it promotes eugenics.
On Monday, President Donald Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform that the campaign was the ”‘HOTTEST’ ad out there.”
Regardless of how anyone feels about the ad, American Eagle’s decision to double down amid backlash reveals a lot about our current political climate, according to experts in political science.
American Eagle’s response minimized, undermined and ignored the criticism about the ad, experts say.
T Smith, a postdoctoral fellow in racial politics at Johns Hopkins University’s Krieger School of Arts & Sciences, said that American Eagle’s response to the backlash “goes beyond merely doubling down.”
“It actively undermines the idea that there was anything harmful or worthy of critique in the first place,” Smith told HuffPost. “By framing the campaign as a wholesome story merely about jeans (and not genes) and refusing to acknowledge the detriment of their messaging, they participate in normalizing and reinforcing the very hierarchies — which are rooted in white supremacist logics — that the ad evoked.”
“This kind of erasure functions to prop up eugenicist and racial hierarchy ideals as if they are normal, apolitical, and above examination,” they continued. “That isn’t a passive avoidance. It is an attempt to preserve those power structures as a cultural baseline immune from challenge.”
“Hierarchical, eugenicist, and sexualized messaging are not required to sell jeans. This was deliberate. The messaging was intentional, and so was the denial of its implications.”
– T Smith, Johns Hopkins University’s Krieger School of Arts & Sciences
Tabitha Bonilla, an associate professor of political science and human development and social policy at Northwestern University, told HuffPost that she believes it seemed as though American Eagle “more or less brushed the criticism off rather than directly address it or let those with negative reactions know that they have been heard.”
“They effectively tried to reuse their message about ‘great jeans’ to say they looked good on everyone, and in this both minimized and ignored criticism that they were playing into eugenic tropes about who has good genes,” she said.
What American Eagle’s response says about our current political climate.
Smith emphasized that Trump’s response to the ads in itself says quite a lot.
The company’s refusal to apologize shows that corporate power “continues to function as a stabilizing force for a capitalist, white supremacist, and patriarchal order,” they said, before adding that “capitalism has always depended on the elevation of whiteness as the default and the ideal.”
Smith said that American Eagle’s refusal to engage its critics goes beyond avoiding controversy. “Capitalism doesn’t merely ignore white supremacist ideology,” they said. “It relies on it, rebrands it, and sells it back to us under the guise of fashion.”
Steve Granitz via Getty Images
Sydney Sweeney photographed on Aug. 3, 2025, in Los Angeles.
Furthermore, Smith thinks American Eagle’s response was “deeply insulting” and “profoundly patronizing” to the public.
“Hierarchical, eugenicist, and sexualized messaging are not required to sell jeans,” they said. “This was deliberate. The messaging was intentional, and so was the denial of its implications.”
Bonilla said that in our current political climate, there’s been a lot of discussion among Democrats about whether the Kamala Harris campaign spent too much time on diversity and inclusion and whether “these messages made Democrats lose voters to Trump” — though she noted that there’s a lot of disagreement about this issue.
Nonetheless, she pointed out that the controversy surrounding the ad campaign is “happening [against] the backdrop of attacks on DEI and education around race specifically and identity generally.”
“So unlike in 2020, when people and companies were more likely to be sensitive to issues of prejudice, we are seeing almost the opposite of that response where people feel less beholden to ideas of equality,” she said.
How American Eagle’s response might’ve been different five years ago.
“I do think there has been a shift in how public entities are responding when thinking about identity [more] broadly,” Bonilla said. “People are emboldened to minimize (and at times antagonize) others based on race or other identities. In 2020, there was a push for people and corporations to be more thoughtful and careful about identity and inclusion, but since Trump’s election in 2024, some companies have rushed to end DEI programs, and there appears to be effort to distance oneself from DEI efforts.”
Smith said that companies nowadays may not even see the “performance of care” to be necessary.
“Five years ago, a brand like American Eagle might have issued a vague statement about ‘listening and learning’ not out of conviction, but because the cultural moment demanded at least the performance of care,” they said. “That performance is no longer seen as necessary.”
Smith emphasized that we’re seeing a reversal of the so-called “racial reckoning.”
“By refusing to address the racist implications of their campaign, American Eagle is actively normalizing and reifying white supremacist narratives and the notion that white people — namely those [with] blonde hair and blue eyes — are inherently and unequivocally more valuable,” they said.
And Smith believes that the company’s response signals a “broader political movement where complicity with racist ideas has become an unspoken corporate strategy.”
Brands, overall, are “no longer afraid to align themselves, whether overtly or tacitly, with exclusionary and harmful ideologies because doing so sustains existing power structures and appeals to a particular segment of consumers,” they said.
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Smith said demands for accountability and change are “more urgent than ever.”
