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Was Sydney Sweeney’s American Eagle ad really racist?
Love it or hate it, Sydney Sweeney’s American Eagle ad won’t be ignored. Why, it’s even got Trump talking
- PUBLISHED: Wed 6 Aug 2025, 3:04 PM
If eras define indulgences, indifferences, and points of agitation, we must ask ourselves: are we in the decade of the extra sensitive? The most recent case of ‘abused wokeness’ — a term coined some time in the 1930s to refer to the awareness of biases — is the Sydney Sweeney American Eagle ad. It’s got trolls baying for her career on the cancel list, a Trumpian salute, and accusations flying for owning a ‘Nazi dog’, because her fur child, ‘Sully Bear’, is apparently a ‘very white person’s dog’ (what does this even mean?).
The first set of jaws dropped when the ad did — on July 23. And slowly, there was a susurration in media (both traditional and social) aghast at her (and the brand) using the tagline ‘Sydney Sweeney has great jeans’. The ad was, at best, a poor play on words and failed attempt at humour, referring to her blue-eyed-blonde-haired ‘classic American’ look (think Sandy from Grease), and at worst, the reinforcement of archaic Western beauty standards.
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Now, don’t get me wrong, the fact that we’ve evolved to a point where we look critically at any piece of 'art' – a term that advertisements lay a loose claim on – is wonderful. It stops things from getting out of hand —remember the Gucci ‘blackface’ sweater, the one where a black jumper would cover half the face and had a red cutout around the mouth? It could not weather the storm that came after its debut in the Fall Winter 2018 line. Or, the provocative work of the late Italian photographer and art director Oliviero Toscani for Benetton, who found himself out of a job for the ‘Looking Death in the Face’ campaign? Or J.K. Rowling, the author of the Harry Potter books, who often finds herself at odds with her readers?
But bear in mind that we are, at present, trolling someone for having blue eyes and blonde hair, and for looking like herself. Being a slim, good-looking woman, who fits the idea of conventional beauty in a woke world? We are not having it.
And while we could bash Sweeney, whose projects include The White Lotus and Euphoria, for ignoring the moral police of social media and the lash of publicity that comes from an ‘unwoke ad’, she is displaying grace (or just following the notes of a good PR agent) with her path of silence. Instead of arguing her cause or making excuses for her ‘day job’, she is staying quiet and going about her daily life with Scully Bear, even as she gets heckled during movie premieres. It’s like former First Lady Michelle Obama once said: ‘When they go low, we go high.’
In Sweeney’s case, that sounds like laughter all the way to the bank – her career is seeing an uptick, thanks to all the buzz.
We live in an era used to wokeness. This hyper awareness of what is wrong, however, leaves little room for complexity. It’s a forced choice, where we are propagating a culture that is ‘correct’. So correct, in fact, that it does not take into account that world can be complicated and messy. We may have ditched the rose-tinted glasses, but does that really call for a constantly riled-up inner critic?
Consider context: Sweeney participated in the making of an ad. Some didn’t like it. Some did. That should have been the end of the story.
By giving credence to the backlash, by over-analysing what it could mean, not only do we supply extra eyeballs (and publicity) to the ad, but also leave little room for artistic negotiation. And that is never a good idea!
