NEW YORK – American Eagle Outfitters, a prominent U.S. fashion brand, aimed to make a significant impact with its latest advertising campaign featuring 27-year-old actress Sydney Sweeney. The campaign was designed to be “clever and even provocative,” and the chief marketing officer assured industry outlets that it was “bound to stir reactions.”

It has. The question now is whether some of the public reaction the fall denim campaign produced is what American Eagle intended.

The campaign, titled “Sydney Sweeney has great jeans,” ignited discussions surrounding race, Western beauty ideals, and the reaction to progressive political and cultural shifts in America. Much of the controversy centered around videos that played on the words “genes” instead of “jeans” in reference to the blonde, blue-eyed actress famous for her roles in HBO’s “Euphoria” and “White Lotus.”

This wordplay was interpreted by some as a reference, whether intentional or not, to eugenics, a debunked theory suggesting human improvement through selective breeding for certain traits.

Marcus Collins, a marketing professor at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business, suggested the backlash could have been mitigated if models of different races were used in the ads to make the “genes” joke.

“You can either say this was ignorance, or this was laziness, or say that this is intentional,” Collins said. “Either one of the three aren’t good.”

Other commenters accused detractors of reading too much into the campaign’s message.

Former Fox News host Megyn Kelly commented on the controversy, noting on Tuesday via X that the uproar from leftists over the ad only served to boost the exposure of a “beautiful white blonde girl with blue eyes” thanks to her “good genes.”

American Eagle didn’t respond to requests for comment from The Associated Press.

The conversation gained further attention when sharp-eyed social media users pointed out Dunkin’s new summer drink promotion, featuring “The Summer I Turned Pretty” co-star Gavin Casalengo, who jokingly credited his skin tan to his genetics.

A snapshot of American Eagle

The ad blitz comes as the teen retailer, like many merchants, wrestles with sluggish consumer spending and higher costs from tariffs. American Eagle reported that total sales were down 5% for its February-April quarter compared to a year earlier.

A day after Sweeney was announced as the company’s latest celebrity collaborator, American Eagle’s stock closed more than 4% up. Shares were volatile this week and trading nearly 2% down Wednesday.

Like many trendy clothing brands, American Eagle has to differentiate itself from other mid-priced chains with a famous face or by saying something edgy, according to Alan Adamson, co-founder of marketing consultancy Metaforce.

Adamson said the Sweeney campaign shares a lineage with Calvin Klein jeans ads from 1980 that featured a 15-year-old Brooke Shields saying, “You want to know what comes in between me and my Calvins? Nothing.” Some TV networks declined to air the spots because of its suggestive double entendre and Shields’ age.

“It’s the same playbook: a very hot model saying provocative things shot in an interesting way,” Adamson said.

Billboards, Instagram and Snapchat

Chief Marketing Officer Craig Brommers told industry news website Retail Brew last week that “Sydney is the biggest get in the history of American Eagle,” and the company would promote the partnership in a way that matched.

The campaign features videos of Sweeney wearing slouchy jeans in various settings. She will appear on 3-D billboards in Times Square and elsewhere, speaking to users on Snapchat and Instagram, and in an AI-enabled try-on feature.

American Eagle also plans to launch a limited edition Sydney jean to raise awareness of domestic violence, with sales proceeds going to a nonprofit crisis counseling service.

In a news release, the company noted “Sweeney’s girl next door charm and main character energy – paired with her ability to not take herself too seriously – is the hallmark of this bold, playful campaign.”

Jeans, genes and their many meanings

In one video, Sweeney walks toward an American Eagle billboard of her and the tagline “Sydney Sweeney has great genes.” She crosses out “genes” and replaces it with “jeans.”

But what critics found the most troubling was a teaser video in which Sweeney 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 video appeared on American Eagle’s Facebook page and other social media channels but is not part of the ad campaign.

While remarking that someone has good genes is sometimes used as a compliment, the phrase also has sinister connotations. Eugenics gained popularity in early 20th century America, and Nazi Germany embraced it to carry out Adolf Hitler’s plan for an Aryan master race.

Civil rights activists have noted signs of eugenics regaining a foothold through the far right’s promotion of the “great replacement theory,” a racist ideology that alleges a conspiracy to diminish the influence of white people.

Shalini Shankar, a cultural and linguistic anthropologist at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, said she had problems with American Eagle’s “genes” versus “jeans” because it exacerbates a limited concept of beauty.

“American Eagle, I guess, wants to rebrand itself for a particular kind of white privileged American,” Shankar said.

As for Dunkin’s social media video, Casalengo’s burnished skin comes up in the context of the doughnut chain’s Golden Hour Refresher drink. “This tan? Genetics. I just got my color analysis back and guess what? Golden summer,” the actor says, referring to the revived trend of wearing clothing that align with one’s natural coloring.

A Dunkin’ spokesperson could not be immediately reached for comment.

A cultural shift in advertising

Many critics compared the American Eagle ad to a misstep by Pepsi in 2017, when it released a TV ad that showed model Kendall Jenner offer a can of soda to a police officer while ostensibly stepping away from a photo shoot to join a crowd of protesters.

Viewers mocked the spot for appearing to trivialize protests of police killings of Black people. Pepsi apologized and pulled the ad.

The demonstrations that followed the 2020 killing of George Floyd by a white police officer in Minneapolis pushed many U.S. companies to make their advertising better reflect consumers of all races.

Some marketers say they’ve observed another shift since President Donald Trump returned to office and moved to abolish all federal DEI programs and policies.

Jazmin Burrell, founder of brand consulting agency Lizzie Della Creative Strategies, said she’s noticed while shopping with her cousin more ads and signs that prominently feature white models.

“I can see us going back to a world where diversity is not really the standard expectation in advertising,” Burrell said.

American Eagle’s past and future

American Eagle has been praised for diverse marketing in the past, including creating a denim hijab in 2017 and offering its Aerie lingerie brand in a wide range of sizes. A year ago, the company released a limited edition denim collection with tennis star Coco Gauff.

Marketing experts offer mixed opinions on whether the attention surrounding “good jeans” will be good for business.

“They were probably thinking that this is going to be their moment,” Myles Worthington, the founder and CEO of marketing and creative agency WORTHI. “But this is doing the opposite and deeply distorting their brand.”

Other experts say the buzz is good even if it’s not uniformly positive.

“If you try to follow all the rules, you’ll make lots of people happy, but you’ll fail,” Adamson said. “The rocket won’t take off. ”