American Eagle Responds to Critics Over Ad With Sydney Sweeney

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NEW YORKโ€”Teen retailer American Eagle Outfitters has a message to its critics, who took issue over its denim ad campaign with 27-year-old actress Sydney Sweeney that sparked a debate over race and Western beauty standards. The campaign, the retailer said, was always about the jeans.

In a statement posted on American Eagleโ€™s Instagram account on Friday, the retailer said the ad campaign โ€œis and always was about the jeans. Her jeans. Her story. We’ll continue to celebrate how everyone wears their AE jeans with confidence, their way. Great jeans look good on everyone.โ€

The message marked the first time the teen retailer responded to days of backlash since the ad with the tagline โ€œSydney Sweeney has great jeansโ€ launched on July 23.

In the run-up to the ad blitz, the companyโ€™s chief marketing officer told trade media outlets that it included โ€œclever, even provocative languageโ€ and was โ€œdefinitely going to push buttons.โ€

Itโ€™s unclear if the company knew how much controversy the ad could raise.

Most of the negative reception focused on videos that used the word โ€œgenesโ€ instead of โ€œjeansโ€ when discussing the blonde-haired, blue-eyed actress known for the HBO series โ€œEuphoriaโ€ and โ€œWhite Lotus.โ€

Critics found the most troubling was a teaser video in which Sweeney says, โ€œGenes are passed down from parents to offspring, often determining traits like hair color, personality and even eye color. My jeans are blue.โ€

The video appeared on American Eagleโ€™s Facebook page and other social media channels but is not part of the ad campaign.

Some critics saw the wordplay as a nod, either unintentional or deliberate, to eugenics, a discredited theory that held humanity could be improved through selective breeding for certain traits.

Other commenters accused detractors of reading too much into the campaignโ€™s message.

Some marketing experts said the buzz is always good even if itโ€™s not uniformly positive.

โ€œIf you try to follow all the rules, youโ€™ll make lots of people happy, but youโ€™ll fail,โ€ Allen Adamson, co-founder of marketing consultancy Metaforce said. โ€œThe rocket wonโ€™t take off.โ€

By The Associated Press

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