Sydney Sweeney has again responded to criticism of her American Eagle jeans advertisement – including her ‘MAGA Barbie’ nickname – saying that she is “not a hateful person”.
The actress courted controversy in July when she fronted the jeans advertisement, called ‘Sydney Sweeney Has Great Jeans’. Some social media users alleged that the pun on “jeans” and “genes” being part of an advertising campaign with a blonde-haired, blue-eyed white woman promoted eugenics and white supremacy.
A number of prominent figures, including Vice President JD Vance and even President Donald Trump shared their own views. Trump was asked about the campaign amid claims that Sweeney was a registered Republican.
While Sweeney didn’t respond at first, she later said that she did not “support the views some people chose to connect to the campaign”.
Speaking to Cosmopolitan in a new interview, Sweeney said: “It’s definitely not a comfortable thing to have people saying what you believe or think, especially when that doesn’t align with you.
“It’s been a weird thing having to navigate and digest, because it’s not me. None of it is me. And I’m having to watch it happen. I’m online and I see things, but I’m slowly pulling myself away. It’s definitely gone to a level where it’s just not healthy for me to digest it all.”
When asked if the internet could retire one narrative about her forever, she said it would be that she’s a “hateful person”. She was also asked about the online ‘MAGA [Make America Great Again] Barbie’ nickname that some of her detractors have given her.
“I’ve never been here to talk about politics,” replied Sweeney, who tends to keep her own views private. “I’ve always been here to make art, so this is just not a conversation I want to be at the forefront of. And I think because of that, people want to take it even further and use me as their own pawn. But it’s somebody else assigning something to me, and I can’t control that.”
The magazine asked her why she doesn’t correct accusations that aren’t true, to which she again said she isn’t a “hateful person” and added: “If I say, ‘That’s not true,’ they’ll come at me like, ‘You’re just saying that to look better.’ There’s no winning. There’s never any winning. I just have to continue being who I am, because I know who I am. I can’t make everyone love me. I know what I stand for.
She went on to reiterate that she can’t imagine herself speaking about her political beliefs to fans directly, explaining that she became an actor to “tell stories” but that she doesn’t “believe in hate in any form”. She added, “I believe we should all love each other and have respect and understanding for one another”.
On top of the outcry over her American Eagle ad campaign, Sweeney has had mixed success at the box office in recent months, too. The sports biopic Christy, in which she played the titular boxer, became one of the biggest movie flops of all time, but psychological thriller The Housemaid proved a critical and commercial success a few weeks later.
Sweeney responded to Christy’s box office failure, writing on Instagram: “We don’t always just make art for numbers, we make it for impact.”
In other news, it was reported earlier this month that Sweeney could be in trouble for throwing a string of bras on the iconic Hollywood sign as part of a stunt for her new lingerie brand.
She posted an Instagram video on Monday (January 26) that showed her entering a van in the dead of night, filled with underwear. She is then shown tying bras together and throwing them over the letters of the historic Hollywood sign. She tagged Syrn by Sydney Sweeney in the post.
Per the Los Angeles Times, the stunt happened without the permission or knowledge of either the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, which owns the rights to the landmark, or The Hollywood Sign Trust, which is responsible for managing the sign.