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Why Are Women Angry About Sydney Sweeney?
In the summer of 2025, a clothing brand put an actress in a pair of jeans and half the internet lost its mind.
The ad ran on the line “Sydney Sweeney has great jeans,” a pun on “great genes”. In one clip, the word “genes” is crossed out on a poster and replaced with “jeans.” Within days, people on TikTok, X and Threads were accusing American Eagle of promoting eugenics, white supremacy and even Nazi propaganda.
For a jeans ad. Jeans. The things you put on your legs.
Let me say something before the comments section sharpens its knives. Not all women were angry. Plenty didn’t give a shit, plenty liked the ad, and a lot of the loudest critics were dudes. But a very visible chunk of the outrage came from women online, and I’ve been trying to work out what the fuck that was about.
Fine, let’s be fair for ten seconds. The genes joke is the entire ad, and “good genes” has a genuinely ugly history. People have every right to flinch at it. But American Eagle said the ad was always about the jeans, and Sweeney later told GQ she took the job because she loves jeans and wears them every day. A pun isn’t a policy. Brands make dogshit puns constantly and nobody calls a tribunal.
Now here’s what actually pisses me off. For a better half of the last decade, the entire narrative has been…
