Sydney Sweeney is just the latest female celebrity to be reduced to a body part | L4K1J38 | 2024-05-01 14:08:01
The objectification of women in Hollywood is nothing new. Yet something that is striking about the conversation around Sweeney is just how much significance is being placed upon her breasts. It's not simply that they're lovely, in the vein of Chandler and Joey watching Yasmin Bleeth in slow-mo on Baywatch, or Roger Rabbit's exaggerated mouth drop at Jessica Rabbit's curves. Sweeney's double-Ds have been granted Helen of Troy status — the right wing is willing to fight for them and their power to eradicate liberal nonsense.
Within society at large, having a more generous cup size is often stereotyped as more "womanly" and therefore makes you a more motherly mother and wifely wife, if you can follow the maths. Online, left-wing women who are trolled on X are often targeted for their breasts, with favourite insults being "flat-chested" or "unfuckable". It's why one of Marianne's bullies in Normal People calls her an "ugly, flat-chested bitch". To have small breasts is to be unwomanly and thus unloveable, and also, somehow, woke. The right wing in particular value traditional conservative gender roles more than any other political ideology, and Sweeney, with her blonde hair, bubbly persona and ample chest represents a narrow, idealised version of womanhood. Crucially, it's also one that they haven't felt "allowed" to express a preference for in recent years, because of, you've guessed it, woke culture. Therefore, her boobs are powerful to them.
Not since Kim Kardashian's posterior has so much focus been placed on one body part and its meaning. When it came to Kim K, her curves were proof that the "heroin chic" look (modelled by Kate Moss et al) was dead, and instead a different impossible aesthetic was "in". To lesser extent, it was seen with Kylie Jenner's lips, which were heralded as the reason for an increase in fillers in young women, or so-called "Instagram face" – a phenomenon whereby Gen Zers online all look startlingly similar. There's also been Emily Ratajkowski's "ab crack" and Cara Delevingne's "thigh gap" (which was also dubbed a "harbinger of the apocalypse" by a Guardian reader in 2013). Each was blamed for prompting copy-cats, with their body parts condensed into a "trend". Yet boobs are not "back" and bodies are not fashion trends.
A study published in 2012 in the European Journal of Social Psychology proved once and for all that our brains see men as whole and women as parts. A test group were shown a selection of images of men and women, before being shown the same pictures again, albeit with one "sexualised" feature exaggerated. Almost universally, the men were only recognised by their whole body, whereas the women could be identified by just their hips or breasts. "Everyday, ordinary women are being reduced to their sexual body parts," wrote the study's author Sarah Gervais, a University of Nebraska psychologist. "This isn't just something that supermodels or porn stars have to deal with." And what's more, it's not just men doing it, either, women objectify women too. Case in point: the writers of both The Spectator and The National Post pieces were both women.
One of the questions that Sweeney is asked most often in interviews is, "are you a feminist?" There's an assumption that a hot blonde with a great rack can't possibly be intelligent, or political. Her belief system must correlate with a demographic that places the utmost importance on her "all American" looks. Or worse – that the very act of having a bodacious bod – and being proud of it – makes you in some way anti-feminist. That was certainly the line of argument when she starred in the Rolling Stones Angry music video last September, rocking a leather corset and trousers, with some corners of the internet appalled that she would "objectify herself" in that way. The very act of objectification implies dehumanisation. And can you ever really objectify yourself? It's an argument that came up earlier this year when the singer FKA twigs argued she did not recognise the "traditional sexualised object" that the Advertising Standards Agency had reduced her to.
"The biggest misconception about me is that I'm a dumb blonde with big tits," Sweeney shared in an interview with Glamour magazine last year. We'd caveat that with another truism. "Some people think having large breasts makes a woman stupid. Actually, it's quite the opposite: a woman having large breasts makes men stupid."
Related: Coming home to Sydney
This article originally appeared on Harper's BAZAAR UK.
</div> The post Sydney Sweeney is just the latest female celebrity to be reduced to a body part appeared first on Harper's Bazaar Australia.
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