Beyoncé and Sydney Sweeney somehow ended up in the same convo this week after Sweeney’s American Eagle campaign got bashed online for being racially tone-deaf—and a pic of Queen Bey’s Levi’s ad got dragged into the mess.
The chaos started when Sydney Sweeney starred in a new American Eagle promo with a brash pun: “Sydney Sweeney has great jeans.”
In the ad, 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.”
The camera zooms in on her icy blue eyes and denim fit and that’s when the internet lost it. Folks on social media, including Doja Cat, slammed the campaign, calling it creepy and saying it pushed eugenics-era vibes.
Critics said the whole “great genes” thing, paired with Sweeney’s white, blonde, blue-eyed look, felt like a nod to white superiority. Some even called it “Nazi propaganda.”
Now, conservative voices jumped in. Senator Ted Cruz and Fox News contributor Nicole Saphier tried to flip the outrage.
Cruz defended the ad by calling Sweeney “beautiful” and trashed the “left” for pushing woke ideology.
“Wow. Now the crazy Left has come out against beautiful women. I’m sure that will poll well,” Ted Cruz wrote on X.
Just going to leave this pic from Beyoncé Levi’s campaign right here for those saying Sydney Sweeney with her blond hair/denim/sultry look is racist… pic.twitter.com/ZyeMF6ouCI
— Nicole Saphier, MD (@NBSaphierMD) July 30, 2025
Saphier posted a still from Beyoncé‘s Levi’s “REIIMAGINE” campaign and wrote, “Just going to leave this pic from Beyoncé Levi’s campaign right here for those saying Sydney Sweeney with her blond hair/denim/sultry look is racist.”
That post lit up timelines with people debating whether Beyoncé’s denim campaign was even comparable. Bey’s Levi’s project is a 2025 reboot of old-school Levi’s ads, including “Launderette,” “Pool Hall” and “Refrigerator.”
It’s a full-on aesthetic tribute to vintage denim culture, not a science lesson about DNA.