By Joshua Tyler
| Updated
Sydney Sweeney changed advertising this summer by selling a ton of jeans for American Eagle. She did this by simply being very sexy and wearing their clothes.
This caused confusion for some, since they didn’t understand what was different about her ads, compared to what they’d seen other celebrity pitch-women doing. In particular, people pointed to similar ads from Beyoncé, in which she prances around in tight Levi’s.
None of the men who still have testosterone in their bodies (a shrinking group according to most reports) were confused by this in the least. I still have a little left in me, so I’m going to attempt an explanation.
Here’s the short version: Beyoncé is 44 years old. Sydney Sweeney is 28.
Here’s the longer one. Those Beyoncé ads weren’t sexy in the least. They’ve overly produced, processed, and she’s clearly overly made-up to cover her age. They feel inorganic, like something being forced on the audience. It’s like watching a robot try to ape human sexuality.
I suspect those ads were filmed this way on purpose, so that Levi’s could have their cake and eat it too. At the time those campaigns were launched, sexualizing women to sell products was still forbidden by the ESG mandates and activist outrage that artificially regulated company behavior.
Levi’s wanted to do a sexy celebrity in our jeans ad (because everyone who lived in the 1990s knows those work), but they didn’t want to make activists mad. So, they put a cancel culture-proof celebrity in their tightest jeans possible, blasted the audience with her terrible country music, and then filmed the ad like she was a robot. The set is in a busy frame so that everything about it seems lifeless and sexless, despite zooming in to show how good their jeans make her various body parts look.
Everything about Beyoncé’s ad not only feels fake but also is fake. She’s in a laundromat, someplace no attractive woman, let alone a famous one, has ever been. She’s wearing a cowboy hat when we know she’s definitely not a cowgirl.
Her hair is a ridiculous color and styled like a bad wig. She holds a pool cue like she’s never seen one before, and the people around her act like they’re watching the ad and aren’t actually part of it.
By contrast, nothing about American Eagle’s ads with Sydney Sweeney felt overproduced. They’re simple. There’s nothing in them except Sweeney and their jeans. There’s nothing to them except sex appeal. That’s the entire point of it.
That’s the difference. That’s why Sydney Sweeney’s hot girl in jeans ads have changed the advertising landscape, and that’s why Beyoncé’s didn’t. Beyonce’s ads weren’t trying to push the envelope; they were just another part of the existing status quo.
People are done with fake. People are done pretending. Beyoncé’s ads asked them to keep pretending. Sydney Sweeney’s did not.
