As Sydney Sweeney’s ‘good jeans’ ad campaign remains under fire for its racist undertones, she’s garnered support from Donald Trump and JD Vance, two men whose approval doesn’t make anyone look better.
Not unless you’re aiming to be associated with support for white supremacy and MAGA culture.
Trump and Vance’s fawning of Sweeney comes after it was revealed she has been registered as a Republican in Florida since June 2024, as reported by the New York Post, citing public voter records.
The 27-year-old Euphoria star, who has blonde-hair and blue eyes, was recently featured in American Eagle’s ad campaign dressed in denim, alongside the tagline: “Sydney Sweeney has great jeans.”
The ad campaign features several videos in which the company uses “genes” and “jeans” in a play on words, a move which many have criticised and said alluded to theories of racial superiority.
After learning about Sweeney’s Republican registration, Trump described her ad campaign as “fantastic”.
“She’s a registered Republican? Oh, now I love her ad!” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One last week.
“You’d be surprised about how many people are Republicans. I’m glad you told me that. If Sydney Sweeney is a registered Republican, then I think her ad is fantastic!”
It’s typical Trump dialogue that reads like a scheming child who found a loophole to get what he wanted. With public knowledge of Sweeney’s affinity for the Republicans, Trump is now using her as a symbol for his personal agenda.
Ironic, considering Trump’s been blasted in the news for his countless buddy-buddy photos with the late convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, who abused young women for personal gain.
Sweeney has also received support from fellow conservative leader, US Vice President JD Vance.
Speaking to Ruthless, a conservative podcast, Vance urged Democrats to continue to criticise Sweeney, arguing with sarcasm that this is how they’d lose the vote of “young American men”.
“My political advice to the Democrats is to continue to tell everybody who thinks Sydney Sweeney is attractive is a Nazi. That appears to be their actual strategy,” Vance said, adding that he believes this is proof that “so [many] of the Democrats [are] oriented around hostility to basic American life.”
“So you have a pretty girl doing a jeans ad and they can’t help but freak out.”
Trump and Vance’s flag of approval is a flat-out display of powerful men trying to grab hold of any inkling of political support from young women, when in reality, it’s scarce.
Critics have been particularly concerned about the language in American Eagle’s ad campaign as signalling to eugenics, a theory popular among white supremacists that suggests the human race could be improved by breeding out “less desirable traits”.
In one particular ad, this criticism is especially intense, with footage panning over Sweeney’s body as she buttons her denim jeans and says: “Genes are passed down from parents to offspring, often determining traits like hair colour, personality and even eye colour. My jeans are blue.”
As the Palestinian people are facing an ongoing genocide in Gaza, it should have been obvious to American Eagle and Sweeney that an ad campaign with eugenic connotations wasn’t going to land well in the public eye.
However, for some reason, the ad campaign made it all the way through the ranks of American Eagle’s approval process to be released into the world and used as a talking point for conservatives wanting to debate “woke culture”.
Sweeney is yet to comment publicly on the advertisement of her political party affiliation. She’s either made an ignorant judgement call on her participation with the campaign, or she’s content in pandering to the patriarchy.
Shares for American Eagle Outfitters still soared on Wall Street following Sweeney’s ad, so she’s certainly made some business people very happy.
A self-proclaimed business man himself, Trump posted on Truth Social following American Eagle’s surge in profits, to say hers was “the HOTTEST ad out there.”
In an even greater show of respect for the woman who sparked the ordeal, Trump misspelled Sydney Sweeney’s name.
“It’s for American Eagle, and the jeans are ‘flying off the shelves’. Go get ‘em Sidney.”