Sydney Sweeney can never win. On the weekend of December 14, images of the actress in a bikini made the rounds on social media, with many men calling her “catfish” and calling her “disgusting.” The 27-year-old young woman also responded to her detractors with a video of her training at the gym, showing a muscular body, just to silence the haters.
“It’s even better without the sound”
And if men criticize her one day, they objectify her body the next. Just look at the comments found under an interview with Sydney Sweeney, posted on September 21 on the Instagram account of the American media outlet The Wrap. In this video, the Euphoria actress talks about the film Eden, in which she plays alongside Jude Law, Ana de Armas and Daniel Brühl. An element that seems to escape all the men who came across this video, if we are to believe the comments.
None of them mention or react to the content of the interview and they are all focused on one detail: her breasts. “She knows exactly what she’s doing,” some also comment under the video, accusing the star of deliberately highlighting her chest. While it is true that Sydney Sweeney wore a particularly low-cut dress for the occasion, this is in no way a call for the contest for the most misogynistic comment.
Here is a small anthology of what we can read, among the gifs of hypnotized or explicit characters: “Two reasons to watch this reel twice”, “She is not attractive. It's just a pair of breasts. Which is, ultimately, okay for me”, “It’s even better without the sound”…
Sydney Sweeney, reflection of a constant sexualization of women's bodies in Hollywood
Sydney Sweeney is totally reduced to her physique and more particularly to her breasts. So much so that the vast majority of comments are jokes about things she could have said during this interview: “Yes, fish are the elephants of the sky.. I agree”, “I couldn't agree more. The earth is flat”, “She could talk about the story of cardboard boxes and I would listen to her for hours”…
We imagine that all these beautiful people will still have many comments to make when the biopic on the boxer Christy Martin, with Sweeney in the title role, is released in theaters.
This constant objectification of Sydney Sweeney is unfortunately only the visible part of a systemic problem in Hollywood. Actresses continue to be subjected to an impossible double injunction: their bodies must correspond to strict beauty standards while being constantly scrutinized and criticized. If they assume their sensuality, they are reduced to their physicality. If they hide it, they are accused of “neglecting themselves”.
This constant pressure reflects a system that still struggles to see women as artists in their own right rather than as bodies to be commented on. The case of Sydney Sweeney reminds us that in 2024, the road to equal treatment of actresses still has a long way to go.
