Every few months, there is a different (but also the same) debate about Sydney Sweeney’s body. Even writing these words makes me feel icky. This time, the discussion has centred around her American Eagle jeans advertisement, where the camera zooms in on her denim-clad bum and her breasts. In one of the two ads that have now been deleted from their YouTube channel, the actor zips up her jeans while breathily explaining: “Genes are passed down from parents to offspring, often determining traits like hair colour, personality, and even eye colour. My jeans are blue.” Both of the ads end with the same voice-over and text: “Sydney Sweeney has great jeans.”

The use of the word ‘genes’ is obviously meant to be a play on ‘jeans’, as well as a wry nod to the fact that Sweeney is ‘naturally’ attractive. But some people have criticised the ad, saying it echoes eugenicist sentiments, and that the underlying message is that a white blonde-haired, blue-eyed woman has great genes.

It may seem silly that people were alarmed by the ad, but the paranoia around eugenics isn’t coming from nowhere. America has a long history of practicing eugenics, with Black and Indigenous people forcibly sterilised and prevented from having children in the US as late as the 1970s. Even this year, eugenic talking points were used at pro-natalist conferences, where the far-right discussed the supposed decline of birthrates in the US. In the Guardian’s podcast Today in Focus, Moria Donegan noted that one of the speakers at NatalCon highlighted that the birthrate in the US increased slightly in 2024 – but as they were children of illegal immigrants, they were the “wrong” type of babies.

It also doesn’t help that the American Eagle ad is referencing Brooke Shields’ 1980 Calvin Klein ad, which also plays on the words ‘genes’ and ‘jeans’, and depicts a 15-year-old Shields struggling to put on her trousers, the camera fixed on her bum.

The ad is ridiculous. Those who are critical of it, for its racist undertones and regressive sexualisation of women, have a right to be. For the most part, they are criticising what these advertisements represent in our current climate, where both culture and policy are becoming ever more conservative. The right, by contrast, is largely defending Sweeney and the ad. Last night, White House communications manager Steven Cheung even chimed in on the debate, slamming critics and writing: “This warped, moronic and dense liberal thinking is a big reason why Americans voted the way they did in 2024. They’re tired of this bullshit.” It’s not the first time the right have come out to bat for Sweeney: last year, they celebrated the actor and her breasts for symbolising the “death of woke”, as finally, a beautiful white, blonde woman had been made super famous again. (At the same time, in December, they were disgusted by her body after paparazzi snapped pictures of her sunbathing after she had bulked up for her upcoming role as boxer Christy Martin. They seem to have forgotten all about that, coming to her defence against the angry “woke mob” again.)

The Trump administration and the right are trying to make it seem like the left are crazy, crybaby reactionaries, when their misgivings about the ad are more than justified. The Trump administration has emboldened US white supremacist groups with its anti-immigration and DEI policies, and there is currently a white-only settlement in Arkansas that is looking to expand to other states. Israel is also committing a genocide in Gaza, backed and funded by the US, which is, as writer and disability activist Alice Wong writes, “eugenics and a mass disabling event.” Racism and eugenics are everywhere – the left aren’t hysterical for saying so.

When it comes to Sweeney, her body has unfortunately become a political battleground. In June she sparked yet more discourse after she teamed up with men’s personal care company Dr Squatch to sell bars of soap containing her bathwater. A lot of people, particularly women, were shocked and upset by this stunt, claiming that she was “pandering to men”. This argument has also been used against her for doing topless scenes in Euphoria and Anyone But You, which led some people to conclude that she deserves all the hate she is getting. Personally, I think that Sweeney is trying to navigate the fact that she is an incredibly sexualised person in the public eye.

In an interview with the Independent in 2022, the then 24-year-old said that she is very proud of her work on Euphoria, but no one talks about it because “I got naked.” Nudity should not be a big deal in film and TV – though we should think critically about who is predominantly asked to go nude, and who is asking them to do this – but female actors are often shamed for it, or worse. Sharon Stone lost custody of her son in 2004 because of her sex scene in Basic Instinct, with the judge asking her then four-year-old son if he knew his mother made “sex movies”. As Katherine Angel writes in her book Tomorrow Sex Will Be Good Again, it is risky to write about sex or your sex life, because it can be legally used against you. In the case of actresses, it appears that even acting in sex scenes can cost you massively.

With the weight of this in mind, it seems like Sweeney is trying to assert some semblance of control over the situation. By selling her bathwater, she is signalling to us that she is in on the joke. You like her breasts? She knows – she’s got good ‘genes’. She understands, as model and author Emily Ratajkowski writes in her book My Body, that she has a “commodifiable asset, something the world valued”.

Ratajkowski continues: “All women are objectified and sexualised to some degree, so I figured I might as well do it on my own terms.” This is not a belief Ratajkowski holds anymore, however: “My position brought me in close proximity to wealth and power and brought me some autonomy, but it hasn’t resulted in true empowerment.” Sweeney’s actions are also not resulting in true empowerment or control, and it is unclear whether she knows this and doesn’t care because she wants or needs money, or truly believes this is a way for her to have some autonomy over her body. Either way, it seems like Sweeney is playing a losing game in our deeply sexist and capitalist society.