The Sydney Sweeney controversy, explained

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Already, and this is the Daily Art.

This is the Daily ohs oh, now it makes sense. Good morning, and welcome to the Daily OS. It's Wednesday, the sixth of August. I'm Emma Gillespie.

I'm Billy fit Simon's, a.

New denim ad featuring actress Sidney Sweeney, has sparked major controversy over recent weeks over what critics say are references to white supremacist messaging. The ad has divided opinion online and drawn responses from major political figures, including Donald Trump. The controversy centers around the language used in the campaign

Sidney Sweeney is an American actress. She is best known for her roles in Euphoria and also in The White Lotus season one. Yes, well I didn't watch that season, so I'm actually not that familiar Sidney Sweeney. But what I do know her from is the film Anyone But You, which was filmed in Australia, And so I feel like a lot of Australians know her, if not from those TV she's.

Not from those massive successes. They might know her from many month for You, but she spent many months here. She filmed in Sydney for a long time. That is correct. Maybe what is lesser known for an Australian audience though, is American Eagle. What's American Eagle?

Yes, so they are a fashion brand.

They produce jeans and denim, and I think for the purposes of this, that's basically what.

You need to know about them. They are a jeens brand.

Okay, now let's start with the ad itself. What can you see in this ad. What is it showing?

Yeah, so there are multiple different ads. They all show Sydney Sweeney. Sometimes she's lying down, she's walking around, she's wearing the jeans and all of the ads. Here is some audio from just one of those ads. Gans are passed down from parents to aspring, often determining traits like her color, personality and eve an eye color.

My gens are blue, Sydney's Tweeney hasburg Keynes.

And you'll hear there the word play with jeans as in j E A n s ye and jeans as in g E N E S. I don't know how that sounds for an audio platform, but genetics, Yes, I think you get where I'm going.

And so it's a play on words there.

Now, again, for anyone who's not familiar with Sidney Sweeney, she is a white woman. She has blonde hair, and she has blue eyes, which they reference in the audio that you just heard. And I think you can pretty safely assume that the inference in this ad is that she is a conventionally attractive woman, and they're really playing into that here.

Yeah, I would go as far to say as Sydney Sweeney is a famously conventionally beautiful woman exactly. So there's that play on words there, genes as in denim jens and genes as in genetics.

That's a better way of explaining it than the spelling.

That I did, Billy.

Why are people upset about the ad?

Yeah?

So critics on social media say that the great genes for as in the genetics phrasing, combined with Sweeney's appearance, really echoes white supremacist language that promotes eugenics. Now, eugenics is a debunked theory that claims selective breeding can create.

A superior race. You likely would have heard it when it comes to Nazis.

It's really an idea that fueled Nazi ideology and it remains popular among alt rite groups today. To give you an idea of kind of the commentary that is happening online around this ad, one person said the American Eagles ad wasn't just a commercial, It was a love letter to white nationalism and eugenic fantasies, and Sydney Sweeney knew it. Another one that I saw on TikTok this has been everywhere. On TikTok, I saw a comment that said, when those

Okay. I think it's also probably worth noting that American Eagle as a brand, I mean, it's literally in the name that there's this kind of American nationalism, this very like US sort of tone, the red, white, and blue, the eagle that is an iconic bird associated with US imagery, and I mean the relationship between America and neo Nazism.

Yeah, exactly.

It's really painting her as this ideal American woman, and there is of course a very problematic history that comes with that.

So what has the response been like from the brand? Have we heard from American Eagle?

We have, so they actually didn't respond for a little while. So these ads first were published on the twenty third of July, and they didn't say anything for more than a week. We only heard from them over the most recent weekends.

And as we sometimes see with these stories, that silence kind of fed into this theory online or this kind of conspiracy that has blown up because of that silence.

Yeah, and I think people didn't know what they were going to say. You never know, you know, are they going to issue an apology or are they going to double down on the messaging and kind of say that they have nothing to apologize for. I would say out

The other genes.

Okay, so it seems like they're trying to brush that off as like a harmless wordplay marketing line. What about Sydney Sweeney, She's a popular global star. She's especially popular as an actress with younger audiences because of shows like Euphoria, which is really a show for young people.

Yeah, she said, she hasn't said anything, so she's remained silent on the controversy. That doesn't mean that she hasn't been out in public, so she has still been posting to her Instagram. She's also been at at least one public event so earlier this week she went to a red carpet for one of her films. So she has been out and about, but she has not addressed this controversy.

That is kind of surprising in this day and age. I guess when celebrities feel so accessible, when we all have social media and we all follow celebrities on social media, it feels almost like it would be harder to not address it. So I think that that probably says a lot. Billy. As you mentioned, this has been around for a few weeks, this story has been bubbling, but I have seen that it's now entered the political sphere. How did that happen?

Yeah, so this isn't the first time that Sweeney has faced controversy or backlash from her fan Now you might remember I don't remember this, but you might remember that in twenty twenty two, she shared pictures of her mum's sixtieth birthday and you could see in those snaps that she uploaded to her Instagram that some of the members of her family were wearing make America Great Again style hats. Okay,

Play on a very loaded Republican Trumpian mantra.

Yes exactly.

And Sweeney did acknowledge the backlash at that time, and she criticized it. She said that people had turned quote an innocent celebration into an absurd political statement. Now you might be wondering, what does this have to do with the current controversy. So, after all this went down with American Eagle. Some people online did some digging around and they found more of a connection between Sydney Sweeney and

So that was just last year exactly, So following that kind of controversy that she spoke out against about her mum's birthday. Then sometime passes and it's the lead up to the US election last year, and Sidney Sweeney registers formally as a Republican voter. But I do think it's worth pointing out that this is one part of a developing controversy. That doesn't mean that we're saying anything about her political preferences, and that doesn't mean that her political preferences make her a Nazi.

No, And again we're not saying that, but I guess that her fans or people on the internet are criticizing her for her political decisions, and that's made a big part of why this has continued to be a big story in the days and weeks after this ad was first published.

Yeah, that makes sense, it makes absolute sense.

It's also interesting and I think speaks to the current US political landscape where maybe ten or twenty years ago, if we found out that an artist or an entertainer was a quote unquote Republican, I don't think it damaged their brand or reputation as much as we've seen it damage the reputation of modern and contemporary performers and artists.

Yeah.

I mean case in point, Donald Trump struggling to find names for people to perform at his inauguration, and the Wikipedia page with a growing list of artists who have protested him playing their songs at his events. So there is definitely a political and a social conversation about the impact of identifying as a Republican. In twenty twenty five.

It's definitely a different political landscape that everyone's playing in.

So tell me about Donald Trump weighing in on this. How did he find out? What has he said?

So he was asked about that by a reporter just as he was about to get on to Air Force one.

Here is what he said. Oh now I love her ad? Is that right? As Sidney sweet Eh, you'd be surprised at how many people are Republicans.

If Sydney Sweeney is a registered Republican.

I think her ad is fantastic.

So clearly they're praising Sydney Sweeney and the ad as well. And after that happened, he then doubled down on his social media platform Truth Social.

He said the American Eagle.

Ad was the hottest ad out there, and he also added that the genes are flying off the shells. Go get them, Sydney. So I think you get the picture that he is very much in support of Sidney Sweeney. Now Trump isn't the only politician who has weighed in on this. He is Vice President jd. Vance also weighed in. He said, the response to this is an example of the difference between Democrats and Republicans.

It actually reveals something pretty interesting about the Dems, though, which is that you have like a normal, all American, beautiful girl during doing like a normal Genes ad. Right, they're trying to sell, you know, sell jeans to kids in America, and they have managed to so unhinge themselves over this thing. And it's like, you, guys, did you learn nothing from the November twenty twenty four election. Like I actually thought that one of the lessons they might

So we're seeing the political conversation or I guess the conversation from the right in the US, leaning on that trope of its woke culture. It's PC gone mad. Exactly Has anything else happened in recent days? Because this story isn't coming away?

No. I mean we had a conversation about whether or not it was too late for us to explain the controversy.

Yeah, but it really has just kept.

Going and going and isn't dying down. I think the only other thing to mention that has been significant is you might think that this level of controversy has been bad for American Eagles reputation, but actually in terms of its financials, it's kind of done the opposite, or it has done the complete opposite.

Wow.

So on Monday, after Trump's post, American Eagle Outfitters, which is their umbrella brand, their shares actually jumped twenty four percent, and it was their best day in about twenty five years, according to Wall Street Journal on the stock market.

Wow.

So they have added hundreds of millions of dollars to their valuation.

Okay, I think that's really significant or an important turning point in this story because what some people might have dismissed as maybe a frivolous, viral social media conversation has actually had real world economic impacts of significant value.

Yeah, and I think that is largely to do with Donald Trump's comments, the US President's comments supporting it.

Yep. Well, Billy, I think we're all now going to be waiting to hear from Sydney Sweeney, whether she likes it or not. She has kind of become almost a poster child for the MAGA movement this month or in the last few weeks. You would think if that was deeply against her politics, that she would want to explain that, but maybe it's not against her politics either way. I have a feeling we're probably going to be talking about this again at some point in the future.

It will be fascinating to see what she does, because if she comments on it in a week, or if she comments on it in five years in you know, a celebrity profile that she does looking back on her life, at some point, I imagine she will have to comment on this.

Oh one. Yeah, Billy, thank you so much for taking us through that today. We really appreciate you breaking down a pretty complicated one for us. Thank you and thank you for listening to you today's episode. We will be back a little later on this afternoon with your evening news headlines, but until then, have a great day.

My name is Lily Maddon and I'm a proud Arunda Bungelung Calkatin woman from Gadighl Country. The Daily oz acknowledges that this podcast is recorded on the lands of the Gadighl people and pays respect to all Aboriginal and Torres s right island and nations. We pay our respects to the first peoples of these countries, both past and present.