Sydney Sweeney's advertising campaign for jeans brand American Eagle sparked heated debate this summer. Now the film star is speaking out about the criticism in an interview with GQ magazine.
Ultimately, the ad was about “great jeans.” It didn’t affect me one bit, she says.
The advertising campaign quickly became big politics and several on the right wing in the US, including President Donald Trump, came out to defend American Eagle – and Sydney Sweeney. Something she herself says she barely saw because she was filming the series “Euphoria” at the time.
Then I work 16 hours a day and then I go to bed. So I didn't see much of that.
However, she noticed that American Eagle's stock skyrocketed, at most by 38 percent.
"I became aware of the numbers over time. So when I saw all the headlines about store visits being down, I knew it wasn't true. It was just talk," she says.
The advertising campaign's slogan "Sydney Sweeney has great jeans" was criticized by writers such as Doreen St Felix in the New Yorker for making a connection between "great jeans" and "great genes" - that is, perfect genes, as a way of highlighting white body ideals.
"It was a jeans commercial. Seriously, the reactions were definitely surprising, but I love jeans. I always wear jeans," Sydney Sweeney told GQ.
