I’ll hold my hands up: when the internet first freaked out over Sydney Sweeney’s so-called ‘white supremacist’ American Eagle ad this summer, I thought it was bullshit. The kind of confected outrage whipped up by hysterical TikTok pundits who haven’t, like me (who has actually worked in advertising), ever set foot inside one — and therefore don’t know that the last thing a mainstream brand like American Eagle wants is to be dragged into such febrile political territory by intentionally courting the alt-right.
Still, the alt-right did so, and Sweeney did too, just as President Trump — who called the campaign “the HOTTEST ad out there”. And then last week, a video clip from an interview Sweeney gave recently started to circulate — in this one, it was the journalist who asked her if she wanted to set the record straight and make it clear that no, she wasn’t actually calling everyone who voted for Trump a white supremacist.
This has been seen by many as smoking gun evidence she’s some avid Trump MAGA type – or, at the very least, shamefully doesn’t wish to spurn that slice of her fanbase. Of course, there’s also the small chance that Sweeney is so insulted by being accused of being a wall-to-wall eugenicist that she has decided not to dignify it with an answer (though, having floated that theory among friends, I can tell you it’s not finding many adherents).
Whatever theory you believe, the one thing that can’t be argued is that Sydney Sweeney’s increasingly confounding PR strategy is endangering her brand. Because it’s not just about the American Eagle flap, right? And then there’s her appearance at June’s universally mocked Bezos-Sánchez wedding, the embarrassing new relationship with reputationally spotty music exec Scooter Braun (you know, Taylor Swift’s foe), and her eager beaver ‘quantity over quality’ approach to brand partnerships – like, say, that range of soaps produced with water from her bath which was also just plain weird.
Once a magnet for controversy, Sydney Sweeney’s mistakes have now begun to overshadow most people’s awareness of her talent as an actor. Her latest movie, Christy – that’s the leading woman forced to undergo a significant physical overhaul biopic that actresses feeling respectable-acting-chops-needing must do these days – was released last week to underwhelming figures, could you believe it? Sydney Sweeney can still make a headline, but apparently not so much at the box office. And where Christy was initially supposed to be her play for a round in the Oscars race, that door is looking like it will remain closed, since she’s currently being portrayed in a not particularly Academy-friendly light.
Sydney Sweeney gives the impression of going for the ‘never complain, never explain’ school of PR, in which he joins those long since practised by the likes of the royal family. There’s a principle in not feeding the beast : by not reacting to every scandal that floats past your desk, and by expressing that one isn’t subject to every media critique.
But Sydney Sweeney might also bear in mind that even the royal family have accepted this as their rule of thumb, relaxing that hitherto inflexible position in recent years after belatedly understanding that, occasionally, your silence resonates above all else. Sweeney’s not doing that now, and his silence is giving opponents exactly the wrong one.
