The Self-Sustaining Outrage Cycle of Sydney Sweeney's Jeans Ad
Nearly three weeks in, it's getting difficult to remember what everybody was so mad about—or if more than a handful were ever mad at all.
A clothing company ran a jeans ad with a famous actress, and people have been arguing about it ever since. Or maybe the whole controversy was fake, and people have been arguing about what exactly they're arguing about. Either way, the outrage cycle has eclipsed the original story and become completely self-sustaining.
The whole thing started in July, when American Eagle debuted a new ad campaign—reportedly the most expensive in its history—starring Sydney Sweeney, the buxom actress from shows like Euphoria and films like Anyone but You. And in one ad, Sweeney, lounging in jeans and a denim jacket, says: "Genes are passed down from parents to offspring, often determining traits like hair color, personality, and even eye color. My jeans are blue."
The ad wields a pretty obvious pun, using Sweeney's status as a beautiful woman—a result of her genes—under the tagline "Sydney Sweeney Has Great Jeans." Before long an X user was comparing Sweeney to Hitler in a post that currently has 3.4 million views. A TikTok video with millions of views referred to the ads as "fascist weird, like Nazi propaganda weird."
"The phrase, used in bold on billboards in Times Square and Las Vegas, was designed as a denim pun. But online, many saw something else: 'great genes,' a phrase historically used to celebrate whiteness, thinness and attractiveness," someone wrote in Salon on July 27. "Eugenics movements in the U.S. often promoted the idea of 'good genes' to encourage reproduction among white, able-bodied people while justifying the forced sterilization of others. Critics say those ideas still show up in modern advertising and influencer culture, often unexamined."
Conservatives took notice of progressives' overreaction. "The new campaign from American Eagle, starring the blond-haired, blue-eyed beauty, has sent the woke mob into a meltdown," the New York Post declared.
"Wow. Now the crazy Left has come out against beautiful women," added Sen. Ted Cruz (R–Texas). "I'm sure that will poll well…"
"My political advice to the Democrats is continue to tell everybody who thinks Sydney Sweeney is attractive is a Nazi," Vice President J.D. Vance told the hosts of a conservative podcast. "They have managed to so unhinge themselves over this thing. And it's like, you guys, did you learn nothing from the November 2024 election?"
But were "the Democrats," collectively, actually upset about the ad?
At first, "criticism of the ad campaign had come almost entirely from a smattering of accounts with relatively few followers," Ken Bensinger and Stuart A. Thompson of The New York Times wrote last week. "Conversation about the ad did not escalate online or in traditional media until days later, after right-leaning influencers, broadcasters and politicians began criticizing what they described as a wave of progressive outrage."
"'Democrats tried to cancel her because she said she had good jeans,' Jesse Watters added on his [Fox News] show. But no prominent Democratic leaders or officials have even commented on the ad," reported CNN's Reliable Sources newsletter.
"Legitimately curious," progressive YouTuber Brian Tyler Cohen posted to X. "Has anyone on the left actually attacked the Sweeney ad or are Republicans inventing an anti-Sweeney Democrat to be angry at and then devoting their lives to fighting a culture war against an imaginary enemy?"
And besides, they said, conservatives are only focusing on this issue to distract from their own problems, like President Donald Trump's inability to make the Jeffrey Epstein controversy go away. From July 28 through August 7, the progressive watchdog group Media Matters announced, Fox News "devoted over 7 times more coverage to Sweeney than the Epstein scandal"—40 minutes for Epstein versus nearly 5 hours on Sweeney. Reliable Sources added that in one week, Fox "mentioned Sweeney and her ad" 766 times "versus Epstein" only 53.
Then some social media users discovered that Sweeney was a registered Republican, giving everyone a new opportunity to collect clicks. The "star registered to vote in Florida on 14 June 2024—shortly after buying a mansion in the Keys—and listed her party affiliation as Republican," The Guardian reported on August 7. (Florida, a closed primary state, restricts political primaries to voters registered to that party.)
"Oh, now I love her ad," Trump said upon learning this news.
"Sydney Sweeney, a registered Republican, has the 'HOTTEST' ad out there. It's for American Eagle, and the jeans are 'flying off the shelves.' Go get 'em Sydney!" the president later posted on Truth Social. "Being WOKE is for losers, being Republican is what you want to be. Thank you for your attention to this matter!"
Now it's been three weeks since an ad for blue jeans debuted, and it's getting difficult to remember why people were so mad in the first place—or if more than a handful of people were actually mad at all.
We've gone through so many outrage cycles now that each side seems to be simply going through the motions; the actual content seems like an afterthought. The outrage has become self-sustaining, with each side feeding off the other's reaction or what they're pretty sure the reaction must be. Is Sydney Sweeney actually using Nazi dog whistles to sell jeans? Do woke liberals really think a publicly traded clothing company, and one of the biggest stars in the world, are inserting eugenicist terminology into commercials? Who cares, if it means I get to make my political enemies out to be fools.
