BAD LOOK

Sydney Sweeney ‘Great Genes’ Ad Slammed as ‘Nazi Propaganda’

The “Euphoria” star is starring in a new jeans campaign that some say promotes “eugenics.”

Euphoria star Sydney Sweeney is under fire for starring in an American Eagle ad about “great genes” that social media users are calling “Nazi propaganda.”

The ad’s tagline, “Sydney Sweeney has great jeans”—a play on the phrase “great genes”—sparked outrage online, as the blonde haired, blue-eyed actress tells viewers in one commercial that “genes are passed down from parents to offspring, often determining traits like hair color, personality, and even eye color. My jeans are blue.” Wrote one X user of the ad, “The most Nazi part of the Sydney Sweeney ad for me was the use of the word offspring.”

Sweeney was announced as the face of the jeans campaign last week. And while the ads have done little to dissuade some from the assumption that she harbors alt-right beliefs, they’ve been uber profitable for American Eagle.

The brand, which had previously slipped from the pop culture relevancy of its heyday, saw its stock jump by double digits after Sweeney’s campaign debuted. Her star power catapulted the casual clothing company into the national conversation for the first time in decades—and the new profits reversed much of its year‑to‑date losses.

But not all of the new attention is good, as backlash to the “great genes” campaign continues to grow.

One X user joked, “I like Sydney Sweeney and American Eagle as much as the next guy but ‘We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children’ is a crazy tagline for selling jeans.”

The Daily Beast has reached out to both Sweeney’s representatives and American Eagle for comment.

The general message carries over into several of the campaign’s ads, users have pointed out. In a different cut, Sweeney tells the camera, “My body’s composition is determined by my (genes) jeans.” In yet another, Sweeney appears before a billboard for the campaign, as the word “genes” in the campaign’s “great genes” tagline is crossed out to become the word “jeans” instead.

The insistence on centering the word play has only deepened suspicion for some that the ads are somehow promoting eugenics—the manipulation of reproduction in a human population to increase heritable characteristics that are more desirable. One TikTok user called the ads’ message a “racialized dog whistle” and “Nazi propaganda.” Another said the ads “echo pseudoscientific language of racial superiority. All throughout history, those traits have been weaponized to uphold a racial hierarchy.”

An X user suggested Sweeney herself is aware of what the ads symbolize, writing, “The American Eagles ad wasn’t just a commercial. It was a love letter to white nationalism and eugenic fantasies, and Sydney Sweeney knew it.”

Elsewhere on social media, MAGA-supporting users celebrated the ads as the end of “woke advertising.” Others insisted there’s no “there,” there. “If you think a jeans ad with a pun about Sydney Sweeney being pretty is a Nazi dog whistle, you genuinely need to put the phone down for a while,” one wrote.

It’s not the first time the star has been accused of leaning right. In 2022, photos captured at a party she threw to celebrate her mother’s 60th birthday showed attendees wearing “Blue Lives Matter” t-shirts and MAGA-style red hats. Sweeney’s brother clarified at the time that the hats read “Make Sixty Great Again”—not “Make America Great Again.” Sweeney herself addressed the backlash to the posts on X, declaring that her “innocent celebration” of her mom’s birthday had been “turned into an absurd political statement, which was not the intention” and imploring the public to “stop making assumptions” about her personal politics. But the sting was still there for some users, who’ve since written the star off as secretly alt-right.

The “great genes” campaign is just the latest in a series of major career moves for Sweeney, including rumored talks to star as the next Bond girl in Amazon MGM’s new iteration of the franchise, and launching a lingerie line funded in part by Amazon founder—and MAGA-friendly media mogul—Jeff Bezos.

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Eboni Boykin-PattersonEntertainment Reporter

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