“Denim, DNA & the Male Gaze: How American Eagle’s ‘Great Jeans’ Joke Blew Up—Then Blew It”

American Eagle’s Y2K-throwback gamble looked cute for about 48 hours.

On July 24, the company splashed “SYDNEY SWEENEY HAS GREAT JEANS” across Times Square, the Vegas Sphere, and half of TikTok; traders promptly treated the slogan like a meme stock, sending AEO up as much as 23 percent after hours and closing the week above $12 for the first time all summer.

Fast-forward a week and the sugar high is gone—the share price has sagged back to $10.80, erasing the pop and reminding everyone that Wall Street applause is as sticky as a pair of low-rise flares in July.

That whiplash matters, because the brokers cheering the spike are 85 percent male and, on average, forty-something, the demographic opposite of the high-school juniors American Eagle supposedly courts. Gen Z, the most racially mixed generation in U.S. history, says multicultural communities shape 81 percent of its brand choices, yet the campaign centers one conventionally attractive white actress and a pun—“good genes”—that once headlined Better-Baby contests dreamt up by American eugenicists. Add the fact that Sweeney’s famously pillowy pout owes more to hyaluronic acid than heredity, and you can hear the TikTok eye-rolls bouncing off the Sphere.

Lizzo trolling… we love it!

For Black and Brown shoppers, the joke feels less harmless than déjà vu. Their combined buying power now tops $1.98 trillion for Black Americans and $3.6 trillion for Latinos, well over one trillion dollars a year in physical goods alone, once you strip out services. Yet Black consumers remain three times more likely than non-Black shoppers to be dissatisfied with beauty and fashion options. Alienating them isn’t just tone-deaf; it’s bad math.

The real head-scratcher comes from inside the building: roughly 62 percent of American Eagle’s U.S. workforce is female. Somewhere between the fitting room and the boardroom, no one asked that majority—or any focus group of color—whether a eugenics-adjacent pun might flop with the most values-driven cohort on record.

A save is still possible. Swap the line to “You’ve Got Great Jeans.” Put five radically different bodies, sizes, tones, and abilities into the creative, and let the 60-thousand-plus female store associates pressure-test the copy before it rents out an LED canyon. Brands that build that kind of community sense-check grow revenue up to twice as fast as their peers, according to global inclusion studies. In other words: authenticity scales; meme spikes fade.

Until decision-makers diversify pitch rooms, P&L reviews, and MBA cohorts we’ll keep watching middle-aged men mistake day-trader dopamine for marketing genius. Sydney may have great jeans, but culture has a longer memory, and Gen Z’s wallet is already shopping with brands that let everyone wear the punch line.