The Sydney Sweeney Jeans Ad "Backlash" Is Mostly Fake

How a handful of TikTok comments became a national controversy about eugenics, Democrats, and denim.

So apparently we're all fighting about Sydney Sweeney's jeans now. Or her genes? Both, actually — that's the whole thing.

This week, American Eagle dropped a new denim campaign featuring the actress sprawled across various surfaces while delivering this gem of ad copy: “Genes are passed down from parents to offspring, often determining traits like hair color, personality, and even eye color.” Then, with timing that would make a dad joke enthusiast proud, she adds: “My jeans are blue.”

Get it? Genes. Jeans. She's wearing jeans and also has genetics. Revolutionary stuff.

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Within approximately 37 seconds, the internet did what the internet does. But here's the thing—when you actually look at this "massive backlash," it starts to feel a bit... manufactured?

Sure, some TikTokers made videos calling it fascist propaganda. A Columbia University lecturer analyzed it for eugenic messaging. But when you dig into the actual numbers, when you look for the hordes of furious liberals supposedly melting down over a jeans ad... they're surprisingly hard to find.

What you can find, in abundance, is the backlash to the backlash. Vice President JD Vance gleefully telling podcast hosts that Democrats attacking Sydney Sweeney for being beautiful is “how you're going to win the midterm.” The White House communications director calling critics “warped” and “moronic.” Ted Cruz rushing to defend... a jeans commercial. Countless right-wing accounts sharing the same handful of critical TikToks as evidence of widespread liberal hysteria.

The “controversy” even spawned a completely fake apology that went viral — one that joked about American Eagle not realizing “how big her boobs would be.” People shared it as if it were real, further proof of woke insanity. But it was just some content creator having a laugh.

You don't need an actual controversy anymore. You just need the idea of one.

And American Eagle? They're probably thrilled. Their stock price jumped, everyone's talking about their brand, and they got exactly what they wanted: attention. They might have even hired a crisis PR firm, though whether that's to handle actual criticism or just to look like they're taking the “controversy” seriously is anyone's guess.

Photo by Stuart C. Wilson/Getty Images

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How the outrage machine works

Over at The Atlantic, Charlie Warzel wrote one of the smartest takes I've read about this whole phenomenon. His piece on the Sydney Sweeney controversy doesn't just catalog the usual “here's what people are saying on both sides” nonsense. Instead, he dissects exactly how a jeans ad becomes a cultural battlefield, and why calling any of this “discourse” is completely wrong.

Warzel nails the predictable cycle: “Progressive posters register their genuine outrage. Reactionaries respond in kind by cataloging that outrage and using it to portray their ideological opponents as hysterical, overreactive, and out of touch. Then savvy content creators glom on to the trending discourse and surf the algorithmic waves... Yet another faction emerges: People who agree politically with those who are outraged about Sydney Sweeney but wish they would instead channel their anger toward actual Nazis.”

Sound familiar? It should, because we just lived through exactly this script. What started as maybe a dozen critical TikToks became “proof” of liberal hysteria, which became fodder for political statements, which became its own news cycle.

But here's Warzel's key insight: none of these people are actually talking to each other. “Instead, every participant—be they bloggers, randos on X, or people leaving Instagram comments — are issuing statements, not unlike public figures. Each of these statements becomes fodder for somebody else's statement.”