No, people finding Sydney Sweeney attractive doesn’t spell the ‘death of woke’

People crowing that viewers’ appreciation of the actor’s cleavage is some kind of win in the perpetual culture wars have lost the plot, argues Helen Coffey

Sydney Sweeney had no idea her breasts would be hijacked as part of the culture wars (Saturday Night Live, NBC)

Sometimes, amid the constant overload of social media and online news, you see a headline so staggering that it cuts through the noise and leaves you speechless, wondering how we got here. Most recently, that headline for me ran thus: “Wokeness is no match for Sydney Sweeney’s undeniable beauty”.

I had to read it, and re-read it, and then put my glasses on and read it once more. Every time I looked, it made less sense. This particular article was a comment piece in the National Post, and it opened with a sentence even more sensationally ludicrous than the headline: “Are Sydney Sweeney’s breasts double-D harbingers of the death of woke?”

The argument put forth seemed to be that, because people had enjoyed watching the conventionally gorgeous actor from The White Lotus wearing a low-cut dress on Saturday Night Live… right-wing values had won out? Or something? I struggled to follow the logic if I’m honest. I also couldn’t see where Sweeney’s low-hanging fruit Hooters sketch fit into the equation, but maybe I’m just not intellectual enough.

“People want to look at beauty on TV, and in art generally, but we’re being starved of it because attractiveness is deemed immoral,” writes columnist Amy Hamm. “As such, beauty is now political. For this, we can thank the tyrannical, woke, and (ironically) minority vanguard that has for years coerced our culture into pretending that unbeautiful things are beautiful.”

The Spectator published a very similar article, this one called “Sydney Sweeney and the return of real body positivity”.

Sweeney’s brand of beauty has been ‘outlawed’ according to some commentators (Getty)

“Wrapped in a revealing little black dress, Sydney thanks the cast, the crew, Lorne Michaels and giggles and bounces in familiar ways I haven’t seen in decades,” writes comedian and Spectator columnist Bridget Phetasy of Sweeney’s SNL appearance. “For anyone under the age of 25, they’ve likely never seen it in their lifetime – as the giggling blonde with an amazing rack has been stamped out of existence, a creature shamed to the brink of extinction.”

I read both of these “hot takes” with a disbelief bordering on hysteria. Firstly, the suggestion that the kind of beauty that Sweeney represents – white, thin yet curvy, masses of tumbling golden hair, a pretty face that can switch between sweet and sexy (the two patriarchy-approved states of womanhood) – had somehow been eradicated, is downright laughable. No, we may not have Page 3 or Playboy nudes anymore; Baywatch may have been replaced with fewer swimsuit-based television shows. But somehow I don’t think the straight-up “hot” contingent of women blessed by the genetic gods (or, for some, a very good surgeon) have been struggling in the wilderness for the last 25 years.

Why a desirable young woman proudly flashing her assets on TV should be interpreted as an inherently conservative act, I simply cannot fathom

Both articles make out as if the body positivity movement and a push for greater diversity on screen and in beauty campaigns has made conventional attractiveness a crime. In fact, the very reason those movements came into being is that we’ve made very little headway when it comes to pushing back against near-impossible beauty standards.

Aside from the fact that we’ve had plenty of voluptuous (yet slim, a very important distinction) women to admire over the past couple of decades, from Scarlett Johansson and Christina Hendricks to Sofia Vergara and Kate Upton, the cult of the Kardashians, influencer culture and parade of Love Islanders means the pressure to hit every single modern beauty tick-box – big boobs, tiny waist, perfectly rounded bum, curvy hips, “Instagram face” – has only grown stronger and more pervasive. The Sweeneys of the world are hardly social pariahs, ostracised by a society that has deemed beauty defunct or “immoral”. In fact, they remain and always have been the standard to which all women are held and found wanting.

Boobs aside, the argument that “we’re being starved of [beauty] because attractiveness is deemed immoral” holds up to barely a second’s scrutiny. When was the last time you watched a film or TV show and thought, “Damn, if only everyone in this wasn’t so horrendously ugly? It’s really ruining the vibe.” Every corner of our media is still dominated by the Beautiful People. On the flip side, if we are starting to see that shift somewhat in favour of more interesting stories and diverse characters, there are benefits, surely? I don’t recall anyone bingeing Succession and complaining that there weren’t enough hotties to make it worth their while.

The fact that people like looking at breasts, and at beautiful women in general, is a tale as old as time. No one is denying it to be true. No one is outlawing beauty or suggesting we’re not allowed to find attractive people attractive. The body positivity movement was never about shaming conventional beauty, but learning to accept ourselves the way we are – and, in doing so, expand the historically narrow and limited vision of what beauty can look like. It’s not about pushing voluptuous blondes out of the club, but about letting more people in.

As with many totally benign things that somehow get hijacked in the perpetual culture wars, I mainly find the whole thing vaguely exhausting. Why a desirable young woman proudly flashing her assets on TV should be interpreted as an inherently conservative act, I simply cannot fathom. Isn’t a woman owning her sexuality more of a liberal move? Or is that only the case when the woman in question is deemed unf***able? Hot and flaunting your body = right-wing; not hot enough and flaunting it = “woke” (I must have missed the PSA declaring that as the new ideological benchmark).

Whether or not you agree that Sydney Sweeney has a great rack, please, for the love of Hooters, stop politicising it.