The chief executive of American Eagle has fired back at critics of the company’s controversial campaign featuring Sydney Sweeney. CEO Jay Schottenstein fiercely denied that his company was pushing eugenics and racial supremacy in the jeans advertisement, which featured the blonde-haired, blue-eyed Euphoria star with the tagline “Sydney Sweeney Has Great Jeans.” “We never would’ve done it” if we felt it would be offensive in any way," Schottenstein told the Wall Street Journal in an interview published Monday. The CEO said that as an Orthodox Jew, he was baffled by claims the company was promoting eugenics. “I’m very conscious of that term,” Schottenstein said, noting his mother-in-law grew up in Nazi Germany and witnessed anti-Semitic attacks. He continued, “You can’t run from fear… we stand behind what we did.” Despite the backlash, the company gained nearly a million new customers between July and September. President Donald Trump posted on Truth Social in support of the actress and the company. He wrote, “Sydney Sweeney, a registered Republican, has the ‘HOTTEST’ ad out there.”
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