A billboard in the Los Angeles area has been vandalized with a message declaring that the “Proud Boys love” Sydney Sweeney as the right-wing interest in the Euphoria star’s American Eagle jeans ad continues.
The message reads in full: “Proud Boys love Sydney Sweeney. She has the best blue genes,” reports ABC Los Angeles.
A driver who spoke to the station about the billboard said, “I was pretty shocked to read that. Angry, scared, disappointed, I guess a mix of feelings.”
It’s not clear if the message was posted by the Trump-aligned Proud Boys or by another activist.
“If their intentions were to spread fear in the community by putting their name on something like that, although it could spread fear, I think the best thing we could do is not be fearful or scared of this kind of thing. That's the sort of feeling they want to promote,” the driver named Brandi added.
This week, President Donald Trump waded into the controversy after it emerged that Sweeney is a registered Republican in Florida. “If Sydney Sweeney is a registered Republican, I think her ad is fantastic,” he told reporters.
In a separate post on Truth Social, Trump praised the ad for no being “woke.” In the wake of Trump’s comments, American Eagle’s stock was up by 20 percent by he close of trading on Monday.
Most of the hostile reception focused on videos that used the word “genes” instead of “jeans” when discussing the blonde-haired, blue-eyed actor.
Critics found the most troubling was a teaser video in which 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 video appeared on American Eagle’s Facebook page and other social media channels but is not part of the ad campaign.
Some critics saw the wordplay as a nod, either unintentional or deliberate, to eugenics, a discredited theory that held humanity could be improved through selective breeding for specific traits.
Other commenters accused detractors of reading too much into the campaign’s message.
Some marketing experts said the buzz is always good, even if it’s not uniformly positive.
“If you try to follow all the rules, you’ll make lots of people happy, but you’ll fail,” Allen Adamson, co-founder of marketing consultancy Metaforce said. “The rocket won’t take off.”
In a statement posted on American Eagle’s Instagram account last week, the retailer said the ad campaign “is and always was about the jeans. Her jeans. Her story. We’ll continue to celebrate how everyone wears their AE jeans with confidence, their way. Great jeans look good on everyone.”
The message marked the first time the teen retailer responded to days of backlash since the ad with the tagline “Sydney Sweeney has great jeans” launched last week.
In the run-up to the ad blitz, the company’s chief marketing officer told trade media outlets that it included “clever, even provocative language” and was “definitely going to push buttons.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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