A prominent progressive political scientist has been met with outrage after calling actress Sydney Sweeney ugly. ‘She’s a butterface who looks great in jeans,’ Rachel Bitecofer, 48, wrote Monday in a post responding to Sweeney’s controversial American Eagle ad.

‘You sound jealous,’ a user replied. ‘Yer [sic] jealous. Clearly,’ another said, in a torrent of more than 2,000 posts that almost all panned Bitecofer, a former lecturer at Christopher Newport University.

Most questioned how she came to such a conclusion. The term ‘butterface’ is an insulting British slang word derived for a person who has a good body but unattractive face. Sweeney, at 27, has surfaced as a sex symbol as of late.

At the same time, an American Eagle tagline in her ad – ‘Sydney Sweeney Has Great Jeans’ – didn’t sit well with left-leaning audiences. Some left-wingers have claimed that the ad’s deliberate word play on the word ‘genes’ is racist.

Bitecofer went on to say that ‘no-one on the left’ is concerned with the Sweeney advert and that it was ‘all rage porn’ on right-wing social media. She did so despite a slew of news stories and opinion pieces on the advert published in The New York Times, CNN, NPR and NBC News.

Sweeney’s new fans include President Trump, after it was revealed the Euphoria actress is a registered Republican in her home state of Florida. ‘She’s a registered Republican?’ the president said with interest on the tarmac of the Lehigh Valley International Airport outside of Allentown, Pennsylvania, on his way back to Washington after spending the weekend in Bedminster, New Jersey.

‘You’d be surprised at how many people are Republican,’ he added, after expressing surprise himself over the development. That’s one I wouldn’t have known, but I’m glad you told me that,’ he said, before hailing her ad as ‘fantastic.’

American Eagle has shrugged off controversy over the Sweeney advert and insists its company is an inclusive one. In a statement posted on American Eagle’s Instagram account on Friday, the retailer said the ad campaign ‘is 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,’ it concluded. Sweeney, meanwhile, is a member of the Republican Party of Florida, according to public voter records viewed by the Daily Mail.

The campaign in question launched last week. It remains unclear if the company knew how much controversy the ad was going to generate. Bitecofer’s analysis, meanwhile, has been featured by the likes of The New York Times, The Washington Post, Salon, Politico, The New Republic, Real Time with Bill Maher, CNN, and MSNBC.