Sydney Sweeney covers one of GQ’s Men of the Year December covers – she’s GQ’s Woman of the Year, basically. Love her or hate her, you can’t deny that she had a huge breakout year and she was in the middle of several pop culture/political stories. Her American Eagle jeans ads went viral for their eugenics-y vibe (“Sydney Sweeney has good jeans/genes”) and then JD Vance used Sydney as a symbol for Why Democrats Are Bad, and then Donald Trump even commented on Sydney favorably. Add to all of that, it turns out she’s a registered Republican. Oh, and she scored like a dozen other side-gigs, and she’s promoting a potential awards-bait movie with Christy, and she produced and stars in The Housemaid. You can read Sydney’s GQ profile here. A lot of it is about the American Eagle stuff! Some highlights:
Christy & The Housemaid are both about domestic violence to varying degrees, and Sydney works with domestic-violence charities: “It does [mean something to me]. I always speak out about something that is important to me. And for me to speak out, I use art. Through my characters in my movies, it’s a way for me to be able to do my part and spread awareness in different ways through my characters. That’s how I’ve always learned to communicate, and it’s really important.
Being swept into political conversations: “I’ve always believed that I’m not here to tell people what to think. I’m just here to kind of open their eyes to different ideas. That’s why I gravitate towards characters and stories that are complicated and are maybe morally questionable, and characters that are—on the page—hard to like, but then you find the humanity underneath them.
She’s single: “I’m single. I don’t think I’m looking for a man right now. What I’ve learned this year is that I have a really, really amazing group of girlfriends and I am strong and independent and that I’m going to be okay. If love finds me, love finds me. I’m a hopeless romantic, so I hope love finds me, but I’m not the type of person that wants to go out all the time. And I do believe in true love and wanting to be with someone for the rest of my life. So I’m not going to…you won’t see me jumping around a lot of places…[like] guys.”
She’s not trying to narrate anything about her private life for public consumption: “The professional benefits for me of being private is for my own health and sanity. I think that if I let everybody in all the time, I have nothing for myself. I’m just a 28-year-old woman who’s trying to figure it out, and I’m still learning and I’m going to make mistakes and I’m going to grow. And I think that it’s important to be able to do that without having to say every single thing all the time. I mean, I’ll vent to my girlfriends. But other than that, no. I know who I am. I know what I value. I know that I’m a kind person. I know that I love a lot, and I know that I’m just excited to see what happens next. And so I don’t really let other people define who I am.”
The American Eagle ad: “I did a jean ad. I mean, the reaction definitely was a surprise, but I love jeans. All I wear are jeans. I’m literally in jeans and a T-shirt every day of my life.
How it felt when Vance & Trump defended her: “It was surreal…I kind of just put my phone away. I was filming every day. I’m filming Euphoria, so I’m working 16-hour days and I don’t really bring my phone on set, so I work and then I go home and I go to sleep. So I didn’t really see a lot of it.
Whether she wants to clarify anything about eugenics: “I think that when I have an issue that I want to speak about, people will hear.”
I sort of feel the same way about Sydney’s fakakta jeans ads that I feel about the outrage-cycle over Bad Bunny as the Halftime performer. They were both twenty million dumb scandals ago, and the outrage simply cannot be sustained. Were Sydney’s ads really dumb and offensive? Yes. Were they offensive on purpose, to create a controversy? Also yes. And all of these months later, I don’t blame Sydney for shrugging it off either – if she is what I think she is (a MAGA Republican), then she’s keeping silent on purpose, to play footsie with the authoritarian fascists without ever confirming that she’s one of them. It’s literally the only thing that makes sense, given her behavior.
Sydney Sweeney on the reaction to her American Eagle campaign: “It was surreal.” https://t.co/nXrhkNTGcz pic.twitter.com/deqbdN9bD5
— GQ Magazine (@GQMagazine) November 4, 2025
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, cover courtesy of GQ.
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- HOLLYWOOD, LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA, USA – OCTOBER 25: American actress and producer Sydney Sweeney wearing a custom Miu Miu dress arrives at the 2025 AFI (American Film Institute) Fest Presented By Canva – Premiere Of Black Bear’s ‘Christy’ held at the TCL Chinese Theatre IMAX on October 25, 2025 in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, United States.,Image: 1048305377, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: , Model Release: no, Pictured: Sydney Sweeney, Credit line: Xavier Collin/Image Press Agency/Avalon
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- HOLLYWOOD, LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA, USA – OCTOBER 25: American actress and producer Sydney Sweeney wearing a custom Miu Miu dress arrives at the 2025 AFI (American Film Institute) Fest Presented By Canva – Premiere Of Black Bear’s ‘Christy’ held at the TCL Chinese Theatre IMAX on October 25, 2025 in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, United States.,Image: 1048306287, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: , Model Release: no, Pictured: Sydney Sweeney, Credit line: Xavier Collin/Image Press Agency/Avalon
Its amazing that I like her less every interview she does. I’m glad Chrissy has flopped.
She’s just not it, is she.
It would be so easy to just say – I don’t believe in white supremacy.
That’s not a controversial thing to say Not saying anything is tacit approval. Plus her bath water thing and comments around it were also real dumb.
Such an easy win with that one comment DETRITUS.
I’m sure she has some thoughts but she is definitely not intelligent. I think she’s conflated ppl telling her that she is smarter than she looks to mean that she is intelligent, when it really meant you aren’t as dumb as you look. (Misogynistic bullshit but our crap reality)
For her to talk about saying things through her art and then saying when she has something to talk about she will (for the third time) – is a choice. One that says “I said what I said and I meant it.”. Is that even a dog whistle if it’s not coded? Oooph
She might not be intelligent. I thought maybe that’s why her answers are kind of… maybe she’s playing dumb as well, but some of the people who pretend to be dense are actually really smart at doing it, if that makes sense. She’s not…
A savvier person could probably give better answers, regardless of the political affiliation. So perhaps she’s kind of dumb even though she wants us to think of her as a business mastermind.
She really is not likeable, that’s for sure. And she’s one of the few people who looks worse in glamorous clothes and makeup.
All her movies, this year, were flops. Her movie Christy was DOA & will not be nominated for anything. She is definitely MAGA. Proudly displaying that with the Birthday party she threw for her mother. She’s sounds so unlikeable with every utterance.
She doesn’t warrant the energy expended — in talent or looks.
All I have to say about THIS is may her career trajectory remain unchanged …because for ONCE…a public figure who displays cruelty is getting what they deserve professionally. 😡
Yep. She said (or didn’t say) a ton in that interview and I know everything I need to know about her.
The controversy was overblown…. Or maybe I find her so uninteresting that I was not bothered with the ad.
The controversy wasn’t about her; it was about the obvious overtones of the ad. Coupled with AE not using models of color in the campaign. And, no, it was not “overblown”–it was people saying, “enough of this white supremacy nonsense.” As @detritus said in part upthread, it would’ve been easy to say “I don’t support white supremacy and that was not my intention with this campaign. I love jeans and I love AE, so it was an easy “yes” for me. But I understand what people are saying.”
I think the situation became a controversy when Trump, JDVance, and all the conservative talking heads got involved. Then it became a situation her team needed to manage properly. I don’t think people on the internet were actually picking on her (just making an observation instead amongst themselves), but it became a weird thing for the conservatives like JD Vance (who seemed strange even commenting on it. It was stranger than Trump commenting on it because you’d kind of expect Vance to know better than to comment on a younger woman and her attractiveness. That will never lead anywhere good… it always sounds bizarre when a 40 year old man jumps into these conversations about a woman’s looks.)
I love when it walks like a duck and talks like a duck that these people waddle right up in your face , quacking and exclaiming they’re not a duck. Girl, you asked for it, you got it. When will you folks figure out that the average MAGAT is economically and culturally challenged? They’re not buying what you’re selling or going to that movie.
Sydney is mad that the leopard is eating her face. I say to the leopard : Bon appetite!
So, she works with domestic violence organizations and says it’s a cause that’s important to her BUT she also willfully aligns herself with the political party that openly despises women and does not care to protect them. Got it. She’s nearly 30 years old. She’s old enough to know better and to be more educated on this but I don’t think she cares. She is the walking embodiment of Melania’s ‘I really don’t care, do you?’ jacket.