‘My silence widened the divide’: Sydney Sweeney expresses remorse after jeans controversy. Your emotional statement about the shitstorm.
Sydney Sweeney speaks out for the first time in detail about the controversy that arose over an American Eagle jeans campaign over the summer. For many, the commercial with Sweeney in the lead role had a racist overtone – everyone involved received a shit storm for it. The actress then tried to keep quiet about the allegations – until now.
New developments
In an interview with People magazine about her current film “The Housemaid,” she said she was “honestly surprised” by the impact the controversial advertising campaign caused. The 28-year-old emphasized that she originally accepted the collaboration “because I love the jeans and love the brand.” The actress also contradicted allegations that the campaign conveyed questionable messages. She added: “Many have attributed motives and labels to me that are simply not true.”
Sweeney herself now emphasized that she is a person “who brings people together” and opposes “hatred and division.” She normally doesn’t comment on reports about her, but in this case she realized “that my silence only widened the gap and didn’t close it.” She regrets staying silent during the controversy, in which even Donald Trump got involved.
Recap of the controversy
An American Eagle advertising campaign starring the actress caused a stir online in July 2025. The actress promoted the fashion brand’s denim products with the slogan “Sydney Sweeney Has Great Jeans”. The saying deliberately plays with the ambiguity of the English word “jeans” and “genes”, in German “Gene”.
The clips have the following plot: In one spot, Sweeney can be seen dressed in jeans, walking towards a billboard that shows the words “Genes”. She crosses this out and replaces it with “jeans”. In another video, she lies on her back and lasciviously pulls up her pants while a voiceover talks about genetic characteristics such as hair color and eye color. Finally, Sweeney says: “My jeans are blue.”
The reactions: From damage limitation to silence to evasion
Those responsible for the fashion label released a statement in response to the massive shitstorm. It said, among other things, that the various advertising slogans were “just about jeans from the start” and that “good jeans suit everyone”.
Read the entire statement here:
The 28-year-old, however, remained silent. When she was asked directly about the controversy in an interview with GQ in November and was given space to make a statement, she replied curtly and vaguely: “I did a jeans ad. The reaction to it was definitely a surprise.” She added: “The advertising campaign speaks for itself. If an issue comes up that I want to talk about, people will already know.”
Whether her statements are of a strategic nature so that more visitors come to the cinema for her new film project “The Housemaid” remains questionable. Her last film – the biopic “Christy” about the lesbian boxer Christy Martin with Sydney Sweeney in the lead role – is one of the biggest cinema flops of the year, according to “Discussing Film”.