Sydney Sweeney is beautiful, blonde, busty, and unapologetic. Somehow, that’s a scandal.
American Eagle Outfitters’ new ad campaign featuring the star of Euphoria and The White Lotus made headlines last week for being playful and provocatively retro. Sweeney leans over a Mustang, sprawls on the floor in classic American denim, cracks a pun (she has great “genes”/“jeans”), and sells some pants.
Finally, a reason to check your email.
Sign up for our free newsletter today.
That’s it. No sermon, no hashtags, no trauma monologue. Just an attractive woman using her body and her charisma to move product. In a saner era, this would be called advertising.
Nonetheless, a digital mob immediately denounced the ad as Hitlerian. TikTok and X erupted with accusations of “Nazi propaganda.” The core grievance? That Sweeney’s nod to inherited traits—paired with her Aryan-ish looks—amounted to a eugenicist call to arms.
Americans should be able to celebrate good-looking, talented, apolitical starlets. But today’s cultural Left can’t handle that. The backlash is less about Sweeney’s looks—or her nonexistent politics—and more about what her success represents: the power of merit, market appeal, and beauty untethered from ideology.
The outrage came swift and nasty. One viral post asked, “Did they mean to include a bunch of Nazi dog whistles in this?” Another declared, “Saying that a blonde-haired, blue-eyed girl has good genes is Nazi shit.” MSNBC claimed the ad signaled “an unbridled cultural shift toward whiteness.” Good Morning America piled on. Even the rapper Doja Cat mocked it.
Now, compounding the horror, we’ve learned that Sweeney has been a registered Republican in Florida since 2024. President Trump seized the moment, praising her on Truth Social: “Sydney Sweeney, a registered Republican, has the ‘HOTTEST’ ad out there . . . Go get ’em Sydney!” The stock market agreed—American Eagle’s share price jumped nearly 20 percent after the Sweeney ads launched.
That’s because American Eagle’s ad campaign is clever, harmless, and effective. It worked. It’s a case study in what resonates in post-woke America: smart visuals, zero moralizing, and a pitch that doesn’t insult the consumer. That’s what infuriates self-appointed, left-leaning cultural gatekeepers.
As my Manhattan Institute colleague Rob Henderson has noted, the outrage is strategic. Some men call Sweeney “mid” to deflate the self-esteem of women who look like her, hoping to boost their own chances. Some women call her racist for the same reason. And the activist media class calls the ad “fascist” because they’ve trained themselves to see oppression in everything from cleavage to comedy. Wokeness hates beauty because beauty, like excellence, is hierarchical.
But Sweeney also offends for another reason: she refuses to play the game. She’s not overtly political. She doesn’t issue choreographed statements about equity or inclusion. Her neutrality feels almost subversive. And the Left can’t stand it. Remember the faux outrage over her mother’s birthday party because someone wore a MAGA hat? They tried to cancel her then, too.
To be in the Left’s good graces, you must recite the correct slogans. If you don’t, you’re a crypto-fascist with problematic “genes.” That’s the cultural terrain Sweeney is navigating. She’s not MAGA, but she is post-woke. She refuses to enlist in the culture war. And yet her refusal is, itself, a kind of cultural act: it says you can be desirable without a disclaimer.
That’s a stark contrast to the politically active celebrities who are constantly presented as aspirational—Olivia Rodrigo, Rachel Zegler, Emily Ratajkowski. They’re talented, sure, but they package themselves in layers of performative progressivism. The implication: you’re allowed to be attractive only if you apologize first. Sweeney offers an alternative: no apologies necessary.
The vibe has shifted. Wokeness is not dead, but its power to shape culture is waning. Americans are tired of being policed for what they like, for who they find attractive, for enjoying a cheeky ad without reading a political treatise into it.
Sydney Sweeney didn’t kill wokeness. But she’s helping to bury it—in some great jeans.
Top Photo by Emma McIntyre/Getty Images
City Journal is a publication of the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research (MI), a leading free-market think tank. Are you interested in supporting the magazine? As a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, donations in support of MI and City Journal are fully tax-deductible as provided by law (EIN #13-2912529).
Source link
