Enough with the Sydney Sweeney panic
Let's leave cruelty for the sake of cruelty to the white Christian nationalists
I think I’m more than a little stunned by this whole Sydney Sweeney thing. As if sex hasn’t sold for decades, we seem to be having a panic over a sexy jeans ad. We’ve seen such ads before, once with an underage Brooke Shields,[1] and we will, most assuredly, see them again.
A panic won’t change that many men like to look at women and that women often like to look attractive to men. It hasn’t in the past. It won’t now or in the future.
Vanity Fair brings me up to date: “On TikTok, videos racking up hundreds of thousands of views have accused the brand of sending out a eugenicist dog whistle by focusing on a white, blond, blue-eyed woman who talks about ‘genes.’ Other users have slammed the videos for being regressive and degrading to women. Creative that borrows from the male gaze is not always met with unanimous approval—as was the case with singer Sabrina Carpenter’s cover for her forthcoming album, Man’s Best Friend, which also sparked much debate on social networks.”[2]
It's always a bit sad, but hardly new, when alleged progressives and feminists go puritan. The shift from second-wave feminism to third-wave feminism involved, among other things, women embracing their sexuality;[3] the third wave is far from perfect, still bearing a certain racist, cis-heterosexist bias[4] and it remains to be seen if a fourth wave will remedy this without overcorrecting, as arguably has happened with the LGBTQ movement.[5]
Sex is a way we have of giving each other pleasure. Obviously, it doesn’t always work out that way, but I’ve got a hard cold dose of reality for anyone who thinks prudery is the answer: There is zero evidence that prudery restrains misbehavior, as Catholic priests, politicians, and other powerful men have demonstrated for millennia. It serves, rather, as a way of shaming the victims.
And when we accuse Sweeney, with her blonde hair and blue eyes, “of sending out a eugenicist dog whistle,” we invite a question of whether the ad would have been acceptable had the model been a Black—or, to really twist some knickers, transgender—woman.
Enough already. Let’s leave cruelty for the sake of cruelty to the white Christian nationalist crowd and try being kind to each other.
[1] Eléa Guilleminault-Bauer, “Sydney Sweeney Under Fire After Controversial American Eagle Ad Campaign,” Vanity Fair, July 29, 2025, https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/story/sydney-sweeney-american-eagle-jeans-controversy
[2] Eléa Guilleminault-Bauer, “Sydney Sweeney Under Fire After Controversial American Eagle Ad Campaign,” Vanity Fair, July 29, 2025, https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/story/sydney-sweeney-american-eagle-jeans-controversy
[3] Carole S. Vance, ed., Pleasure and Danger: Exploring Female Sexuality (Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1984).
[4] Audre Lorde, “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House,” in Social Theory, ed. Charles Lemert, 6th ed. (Philadelphia: Westview, 2017), 340-342.
[5] Andrew Sullivan, “How the Gay Rights Movement Radicalized and Lost Its Way,” New York Times, June 26, 2025, https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/26/opinion/gay-lesbian-trans-rights.html