GRAMMY Award-winning recording artist Doja Cat is the latest in a long line of critics to raise issues with American Eagle’s latest ad campaign featuring Euphoria star Sydney Sweeney.
During the week of July 23, 2025, American Eagle launched its “Great Jeans” campaign led by the Euphoria actress. As the campaign launched, the clothing brand unveiled a slew of shorts and ad spots of Sweeney modeling in various pairs of jeans and delivering a few remarks before a narrator states, “Sydney Sweeney has great jeans.” While the campaign’s tagline has drawn backlash on its own, one ad, in particular, has been at the center of controversy.
In one of the many shorts and spots American Eagle filmed for this campaign, Sweeney can be found lying down in an all-denim ensemble as she’s zipping up her jeans. As she zips up her jeans, Sweeney says, “Genes are passed down from parents to offspring, often determining traits like hair color, personality, and even eye color. My jeans are blue.”
Several critics took issue with the repeated use of the word “jeans” and how it is a homonym of the word “genes.” More specifically, critics of the ad felt it could be taken as an allusion to eugenics. As explained by the National Institutes of Health, eugenics is “the use of selective breeding to ‘improve’ the human race.” In practice, the use of eugenics in Germany by the Nazis led to mass sterilization and criminalizing marriage between Jews and non-Jews. Given that Sydney Sweeney is a blonde-haired, blue-eyed caucasian woman, critics felt that American Eagle’s latest ad could be perceived as promoting the preference of blonde-haired, blue-eyed, caucasian women like Sydney Sweeney.
As criticism of the ad grew louder and louder, Doja Cat posted a TikTok on Tuesday, July 29, in which she recited the lines from the controversial ad in an exaggerated accent. While Doja Cat didn’t explicitly express her disdain for the ad, many took it as her mocking the ad.
@dojacat my jeans are blee
American Eagle nor Sweeney has offered a comment regarding the criticism they have received regarding the ad.
