Did American Eagle Just Play Us All?

American Eagle. Sydney Sweeney. 

The moment the campaign dropped, the internet split into factions.

Because this wasn’t just a jeans ad. It was a psychological and cultural flashpoint.

• For some, it triggered nostalgia and dopamine.
  
  

• For others, it triggered panic.
  
  

• For many, it reignited deep debates about body image, race, eugenics, identity, and influence.
  
  

Commenters questioned the ethics of reintroducing an aesthetic historically linked to disordered eating and exclusion. Others pointed out how the campaign’s imagery aligned with long-standing Western ideals of thinness, whiteness, and youth — what evante daniels refers to as “genetic aspiration aesthetics” (Daniels, 2024).

“We’re not just being sold a pair of jeans,” Daniels writes in The New Rules of Desire.
“We’re being sold a legacy of exclusion with better lighting and a bigger budget.”

Meanwhile, TikTokers posted side-by-sides of early 2000s magazine covers and today’s ads, reflecting on the emotional and physical toll of the original low-rise era: eating disorders, obsessive self-surveillance, and the silent epidemic of self-harm among teenage girls.

And somewhere in the middle of it all, a question pulsed underneath the noise:
Was this just marketing? Or was it manipulation?

The campaign generated over 200 million impressions in two days (WWD, 2025).
It also exposed a truth the industry still resists: Aesthetics aren’t neutral.
They’re emotional. Somatic. Social. Sometimes even traumatic.

In a digital ecosystem where outrage drives reach, American Eagle hit the algorithm jackpot.
But the deeper psychological cost is what we need to talk about.

The Neuroscience Behind the Outrage Loop

Campaigns like this don’t go viral by accident. They activate something primal and profitable in the human brain.

When we talk about “engagement,” we’re often really talking about emotional arousal. But not all engagement is created equal. There’s a difference between resonance and reactivity. Between connection and cortisol.

What makes these campaigns spread so fast isn’t universal appeal.

It’s the neurochemical storm that starts the moment we feel threatened, unseen, or morally provoked.

Let’s break down what’s happening in the brain when campaigns like this go viral:

• Amygdala activates first, detecting potential threat or violation in milliseconds (LeDoux, 2012)
  
  

• Anterior cingulate cortex processes norm violations, such as exclusionary beauty cues or social betrayal (Eisenberger, 2012)
  
  

• Nucleus accumbens rewards us for moral expression, especially when we share anger or criticism that feels righteous (Brady et al., 2017)
  
  

What looks like “buzz” is often emotional activation without safety. It triggers the same neurochemical cascade as a stress response.

The campaign didn’t go viral because it resonated.
It went viral because it threatened identity.
And the body responds to that, fast and loud.

Nostalgia Isn’t Neutral

Here’s the part most brand strategists missed: nostalgia has a dark side.

It doesn’t just pull at heartstrings. It pulls at memory, identity, and often old wounds and dangerous systemic issues.

Nostalgia plus thin ideals equals trauma reinforcement.
Wildschut and Sedikides (2024) found that when nostalgia is used in consumer contexts alongside unattainable beauty cues, it intensifies body dissatisfaction.

The campaign didn’t just bring back a trend. It brought back the psychological environment that came with it.

As Evante Daniels writes:

“Desire isn’t just about the object. It’s about who you have to become to deserve it. The Sydney Sweeney aesthetic doesn’t invite participation. It demands submission.”

This is exactly why so many people, especially women, reported body shame flashbacks, spiraling thoughts, and sudden anxiety after seeing the campaign.

What looked like fashion to some felt like emotional regression to others.

Because nostalgia, when stripped of reflection, becomes a weapon.

A Speculative Look: Could This Campaign Trigger a Vagal Threat Response?

This part isn’t being discussed in mainstream coverage, but it should be.

Let’s step into speculative territory for a moment … grounded in psychological theory, rooted in human behavior, and informed by how our nervous systems process visual cues.

We’re not just thinking beings. We’re physiological beings.
Visual marketing doesn’t only shape opinions. It can shape how the body responds in real time.

According to Polyvagal Theory (Porges, 2011), the nervous system is constantly scanning for cues of safety or danger. Not just in tone of voice or facial expressions, but in environmental and social context. This includes fashion. This includes imagery.

And yes, this includes campaigns like Sydney Sweeney for American Eagle.

When people encounter imagery that signals exclusion, body comparison, or unattainable aesthetic ideals, the brain doesn’t just judge it. The body feels it.

Here’s what could be happening:

• Heart rate increases

• Muscles tense up

• Breathing becomes shallow

• Scroll speed quickens or slows as defense kicks in
  
  

Some people freeze. Others disengage. Many enter “scroll rage,” where emotional reactivity overrides critical processing.

It’s easy to dismiss this as being too sensitive. But it’s not sensitivity. It’s regulation.

When brands reintroduce hyper-specific beauty cues from a time associated with collective harm — without contextual care — they risk activating a low-grade fight or flight response in the viewer.

And the more often the viewer sees it, the more likely that stress response embeds as a felt experience.

This doesn’t mean every person who saw the campaign entered a state of panic.
But it does mean that brands who disregard the body’s role in perception are missing a huge part of what actually drives emotional reaction and trust erosion.

These images are not just style choices. They are signals.
And the nervous system never stops listening.

Prediction Isn’t Permission

American Eagle almost certainly predicted the reaction (let’s be serious about the types of minds they have working on these campaigns). That’s only part of the problem.

The problem is that they treated predictability as justification.

This is where so many brands go wrong. Just because you can forecast outrage, attention, or buzz doesn’t mean you’ve earned the right to provoke it. Anticipating behavior is not the same as understanding impact. And it’s definitely not the same as gaining consent.

As I wrote in my Centaur AI article:

Prediction doesn’t equal understanding. And it certainly doesn’t mean permission.

What this campaign did was optimize for output, not outcome. It aimed for virality, not value.

Marketing psychology is about aligning with human behavior in a way that builds trust and emotional safety. Manipulation is about using that behavior against people to trigger a result — often at their expense.

Knowing something will trend is not an ethical green light. It’s a warning signal.
And when a brand chooses to push forward anyway, what they’re really doing is gambling with their audience’s nervous systems.

This campaign didn’t earn trust. It exploited pattern recognition.
And that’s a shortcut with long-term consequences.

As strategist Sebastian Hildago put it:
“There’s a political and financial vested interest making a mountain out of every molehill. The campaign is perfectly fine. They knew what they were doing and they crossed their fingers praying for outrage after they launched. Sydney Sweeney made money. American Eagle will make money. The ragebaity press will make money. Everyone won—except all the hypersensitized people who got mad about it. They got played and manipulated. Again. People should stop letting the media and the internet absolutely control how they feel.”

This is what manipulation often looks like in modern marketing. Not outright harm, but a strategic triggering of public emotion designed to generate profit under the guise of controversy.

And the psychological cost? Often unacknowledged.

The Myth of Momentum

Yes, the campaign created movement. It earned headlines, sparked debates, and saw a bump in sales. But momentum isn’t always a signal of success. Sometimes it’s just the byproduct of emotional disruption.

In marketing, it’s easy to confuse energy with alignment. Just because people are talking doesn’t mean they’re connecting. Just because something spreads doesn’t mean it sticks in the way you want it to.

Here’s what the data tells us:

• Controversy-driven campaigns often spike quickly, then fade just as fast. On average, these performance lifts return to baseline within 30 days (Boston Consulting Group, 2023).
  

• When people feel emotionally manipulated, even subtly, long-term loyalty suffers. Edelman’s 2025 Trust Barometer found that brands perceived as exploitative see a 32% drop in repeat-purchase intent.
  

• And over time, patterns of emotional inconsistency lead to trust fatigue, where audiences become cautious, disengaged, or skeptical, even if they still like your product.
  
  

This doesn’t always look dramatic. Sometimes it’s quiet. The customer doesn’t complain. They just stop opening emails. They skip over your content. They buy less often or hesitate to refer.

The damage is cumulative, not immediate.

Marketing built on emotional safety creates sustainable momentum.
Marketing built on borrowed attention rarely lasts.

If it cost you trust to get the sale, that wasn’t momentum.
That was a misalignment.

What Ethical Nostalgia Looks Like

Nostalgia is one of the most powerful emotional tools we have as marketers. It creates instant familiarity, reduces resistance, and taps into deeply felt memories. But like any tool, it has to be used responsibly.

The problem isn’t nostalgia. It’s how we use it.

When nostalgia is treated as a shortcut to sentiment, without any reflection on what that era represented, we risk recreating the same patterns people have worked hard and fought to outgrow.

We saw this with the Sydney Sweeney campaign. The imagery didn’t just bring back a fashion trend. It brought back a psychological era — one tied to exclusion, racism, comparison, and a very narrow version of worth.

But it doesn’t have to be that way.

Ethical nostalgia is possible. It just requires intention. It asks us to remember more honestly, and to create space for more people in the memory.

Here’s what that looks like:

• Contextual clarity. When reviving past aesthetics, acknowledge what was harmful then and how your brand is showing up differently now.
  

• Expanded representation. True inclusion isn’t just visual. It’s emotional. It means your audience doesn’t have to shrink, perform, or decode the message to feel like they belong.
  

• Psychological safety. Use memory as a bridge, not a barrier. Make sure the invitation to “remember” doesn’t come at the cost of someone’s sense of self.
  
  

When you root nostalgia in empathy, context, and care, it becomes more than a marketing device.

It becomes a moment of connection.
And connection is where belonging begins.

Reflection for Brand Leaders

It’s easy to hyper-analyze something in retrospect But I venture to guess many of us would have been swirling in a vortex of ethical considerations if we had a seat at the table. 

So ask yourself, if you were in the creative review meeting, would you have approved this?

• Would you run it knowing it would generate backlash by design?

• Would you feel comfortable defending it to your most loyal audience?

• Would you call it success if millions felt unseen or retraumatized?
  
  

This is where modern marketing requires moral maturity.
It’s not just about what’s trending. It’s about what’s true to your values.

Works Cited (APA Style)

Ariely, D. (2008). Predictably Irrational. HarperCollins.
Boston Consulting Group. (2023). Brand Volatility Index: Controversy and Market Performance.
Brady, W. J., Wills, J. A., Jost, J. T., Tucker, J. A., & Van Bavel, J. J. (2017). Emotion shapes the diffusion of moralized content in social networks. PNAS, 114(28), 7313–7318.
Daniels, E. (2024). The New Rules of Desire. Cultural Field Notes. https://culturalfieldnotes.substack.com/p/the-new-rules-of-desire
Edelman Trust Institute. (2025). 2025 Edelman Trust Barometer – Brand Trust, From We to Me.
Eisenberger, N. I. (2012). Social pain and physical pain share common neural substrates. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 21(1), 42–47.
Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, Fast and Slow. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
LeDoux, J. E. (2012). Rethinking the emotional brain. Neuron, 73(4), 653–676.
Porges, S. W. (2011). The Polyvagal Theory. W. W. Norton & Company.
Wildschut, T., & Sedikides, C. (2024). Nostalgia’s double-edged sword in consumer contexts. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 34(2), 215–230.
WWD. (2025, April 12). American Eagle’s Sydney Sweeney campaign sparks 200 million impressions in 48 hours.