American Eagle defends Sydney Sweeney: It was always about the jeans

Teen retailer American Eagle Outfitters has a message to its critics who took issue over its denim ad campaign with -year-old actor Sydney Sweeney that sparked a debate over race and Western beauty standards The campaign the retailer mentioned was inevitably about the jeans In a declaration posted on American Eagle s Instagram account on Friday the retailer revealed the ad campaign is and inevitably 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 The message marked the first time the teen retailer responded to days of backlash since the ad with the tagline Sydney Sweeney has great jeans launched last week In the run-up to the ad blitz the company s chief marketing officer explained business media outlets that it included clever even provocative language and was definitely going to push buttons It s unclear if the company knew how much disagreement the ad could raise Greater part of the negative reception focused on videos that used the word genes instead of jeans when discussing the blonde-haired blue-eyed actor known for the HBO series Euphoria and White Lotus Critics exposed the preponderance 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 Several 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 campaign s message Selected marketing experts announced the buzz is invariably 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 Allen Adamson co-founder of marketing consultancy Metaforce declared The rocket won t take off