There aren’t many advertising campaigns that elicit responses from the US president and vice-president, the senator Ted Cruz and the rappers Doja Cat and Lizzo. But the Euphoria actor Sydney Sweeney’s recent ad for American Eagle denim has done just that.
Critics have interpreted the campaign as promoting eugenics, defenders have taken the backlash as evidence of so-called “woke” culture in the extreme and scrutinising it has taken on the trappings of a cottage industry. “Clocking in for my shift at the Sydney Sweeney American Eagle opinion factory,” the journalist Hunter Harris wrote on her Substack.
