Sydney Sweeney Said Some Words About Her American Eagle Jeans Fiasco

With Christy set to hit theaters this week, Sydney Sweeney is working the promotional circuit, complete with a cover story in the latest issue of GQ. Surprisingly, she finally addresses the American Eagle jeans fiasco that dominated headlines over the summer. Unsurprisingly, her thoughts on the matter are not … that deep. Let’s just say Sydney didn’t strain herself on this one.

For a quick refresher, the ad was accused of using tone-deaf wordplay during a particularly dark time for the country. Sweeney quickly became a football in the national discourse with one side of the aisle falsely accusing the other of waging war on hot blondes (not the issue — at all), and the whole thing got so ridiculous that the highest office in the land weighed in. Apparently, that guy doesn’t have more important things to worry about. Sweeney’s voter registration being outed also didn’t help the situation, so she and American Eagle went radio silent. Until now.

In theory, here is Sydney Sweeney’s first reaction to the debacle:

We’re sort of talking around this American Eagle ad right now, and maybe we should just talk about it. Were you surprised by the reaction?

I did a jean ad. I mean, the reaction definitely was a surprise, but I love jeans. All I wear are jeans. I’m literally in jeans and a T-shirt every day of my life.

The president and the vice president spoke about the jeans ad. What was that like?

It was surreal.

Easy there, tiger! Save some for the memoir. To GQ’s credit, the writer tried to get Sweeney to comment on the “jeans/genes” wordplay that sparked the backlash, and I’m no PR expert, but this is probably not the response you want to give: “I think that when I have an issue that I want to speak about, people will hear.”

Yikes. OK, so Sydney Sweeney really doesn’t want to talk about this. I’m guessing that’s the end of that, except no wait, she does have something very important she wants to get off her chest:

I was aware of the numbers as it was going. So when I saw all the headlines of in-store visits were down a certain percentage, none of it was true. It was all made up, but nobody could say anything because [the company was] in their quiet period. So it was all just a lot of talk. And because I knew at the end of the day what that ad was for, and it was great jeans, it didn’t affect me one way or the other.

To recap: Sydney Sweeney had nothing to say about the genetics discussion, but you better believe she’ll give you a piece of her mind when it comes to… the percentage of in-store visits during Q3 2025. Neat, cool. Do you think her publicist drinks a lot? I would probably drink a lot.

“She talked about in-store KPIs? Hold my calls. Glug glug glug glug.”