Sydney Sweeney exposes cruel posts about her bikini photo. She's not the only one speaking out.

Sydney Sweeney has cemented herself as a power player in Hollywood. Since her breakout role as Cassie Howard on HBO’s Euphoria in 2019, Sweeney has earned two Emmy nods, launched her production company, Fifty-Fifty Films, and sparked a rom-com revival with the box-office success of Anyone But You. Success, though, hasn't immunized the 27-year-old from conversations about her body — whether that’s people gushing over her looks or, as is the case this week, shaming her for not measuring up to some made-up ideal.

By most definitions, Sweeney fits squarely within strict Western beauty standards: She’s white, thin, blonde and beautiful, so much so that her mass appeal was once declared the death of “wokeness” by the writer Richard Hanania … whatever that means. (Sweeney is only too aware of how people perceive her: She asked Saturday Night Live to make jokes about her chest, and even wore a NSFW shirt with a pointed message.)

But Sweeney’s often-celebrated figure became the topic of conversation again earlier this week, when paparazzo photos taken outside her home in Florida hit the internet, leading to a flood of negative comments about her physique, which looked a little different after intensive training for her latest project. One user on X included Sweeney’s photos alongside the caption, “All women are catfish. The question is, to what degree.” Others stated in the comments section of an article about the photos that the actress was “mid,” “frumpy,” “a five at best,” “dumpy” and “very chunky.”

In response, Sweeney shared an Instagram video featuring these hateful words — followed by videos and images of herself training proudly for her upcoming role as the boxer Christy Martin. The athlete, whom Sweeney has described as an “incredible woman” and a “testament to resilience, strength and hope,” survived after her husband, Jim Martin, apparently came close to killing her during a domestic dispute.

It’s not the first time Sweeney has put shamers in their place. In 2021, she uploaded a video of herself crying over being called “ugly” on Twitter, and she had her representatives respond in April to a producer who declared she couldn’t “act” and was “not pretty.”

The barrage of attacks on Sweeney shows that no matter how closely you measure up to idealized beauty standards, even the subtlest defiance of them can expose you to cruel remarks. This is a time when many women feel like second-class citizens, thanks to the rollback of reproductive rights — and to what one TikToker called out as a celebration of “tradwife” culture and a hyper-fixation on women’s appearance. So some are speaking out about what Sweeney’s body-shaming means for the current moment.

‘No woman can win’

Zeynab Mohamed wrote about the topic in her Substack, Face Value, saying that the backlash against Sweeney “ignited a deeply depressing but all-too-familiar discourse.” The catfish comments, in particular, illuminated the notion that “when [Sweeney] looks polished on Instagram, she’s accused of being fake. When caught candidly by paparazzi, she’s criticised for being too real.”

Mohamed called it a “double bind” that “ensures no woman can win.” Male stars, she argues, do not face the same double standard, even if Chris Hemsworth’s abs don’t quite pop in a paparazzi shot the way they might in a Marvel movie.

“Sydney Sweeney owes no one an explanation for her body, her bikini photos, or her existence,” Mohamed continued. “Her job is to act — not to meet arbitrary beauty standards set by strangers online.”

‘They want us to fail’

Like Mohamed, another journalist, Helen Coffey, also reflected on the delight people seemed to take in finding that Sweeney was less beautiful than the world first thought. In an essay for the Independent, she said that these commenters, mostly men, appeared to enjoy watching women like Sweeney “fall from grace.”

Coffey wrote that while none of the insults hurled Sweeney’s way are in any way “vaguely true,” it just proves that “it really doesn’t matter what you look like.”

“None of us will ever be good enough to appease men who hate women — because they want us to fail,” Coffey declared. “And when we commit the cardinal sin of being real and human, rather than simply an object to be admired … well, that’s the biggest failure of all.”

‘Very narrow, gendered standard of attractiveness’

Salon writer Nardos Hailey noted that this is not the first time that someone who conforms with Western beauty standards has failed to live up to impossible expectations. She compared the discourse around Sweeney to posts about other celebrities, including Margot Robbie, who, even though she embodies many of the same beauty standards as Sweeney, has been labeled unattractive by body shamers.

While men online have “upheld these actresses as the pinnacle of beauty standards,” Hailey wrote, “the second they no longer fit into this rigid form of femininity — there was a swift backlash.” Sweeney transformed her silhouette so that she could accurately portray Martin, an accomplished athlete, on camera — a role she’s clearly proud of and excited to take on.

Hailey speculated that such attacks are just another way of trying to control women’s bodies. The trolls' refusal to accept Sweeney’s changing body was a rejection of her autonomy, since it meant that she now did not fit into the “very narrow, gendered standard of attractiveness.”

‘To embody a patriarchal fantasy is its own special hell’

Yet while many people chose to respond to the attacks on Sweeney by reminding the world she is a great beauty, Hayley Maitland of Vogue noted that this no solution to the misogyny. Calling Sweeney “literally beautiful” rather than calling her “mid,” Maitland said, is still insisting that women should be valued only for their physical appearance.

“Sweeney is, of course, far closer to the culture-at-large’s Platonic ideal of symmetrical blonde womanhood than many, and she is doubtless spared much of the vitriol that other women in the public eye (most women in the TikTok age, really) aren’t,” Maitland hypothesized. “But to embody a patriarchal fantasy is its own special hell — one in which you’re cast as sexually available at every turn and read for filth when you threaten to rupture that delusion.”

‘They’re told women are the enemy’

In an essay in her Substack, Airplane Mode, the writer Liz Plank dove into what has shaped the commenters’ mindset in the first place. She theorized that these body shamers — whom she claimed were mostly men — may have been shaped by “bad algorithms” on social media, as well as incel culture, and that they have been radicalized to “hate” women who don’t fit into their idealized standards. Plank speculated that men who are lonely and have no authentic connections to women in their lives may harbor the notion that subjecting women’s bodies to harsh analysis is fair game.

“They’re told women are the enemy, and relationships are power struggles, when in reality, they’re being robbed of the vulnerability and joy that come with connection,” Plank wrote. “Instead of love and acceptance, they’re left tweeting about how Sydney Sweeney is ‘mid.’”

While Plank writes that Sweeney will be “fine,” she’s not so sure about the men who relish criticizing her bikini photos. “Tearing women down won’t fill the void, and it won’t bring love or self-esteem,” she claimed. “The solution isn’t rejecting women — it’s rejecting the voices convincing you to hate them.”

‘Not realistic’

Another TikToker, @ida_que, pointed out in a video that the onslaught of comments on Sweeney’s appearance may be due partially to the fact that social media has got us accustomed to seeing celebs all glowed up, after the massive effort that goes into creating an aesthetically pleasing photo or red carpet video.

“I feel like we all just suffer from, like, human blindness, like we don't know what real people in the real world actually look like anymore,” she said. “We spend so much time on social media, looking at filtered photos, looking at post photos where everyone looks their best — like everyone's done up, everyone's wearing the best outfit — to the point where, like, we think that that's how people look 24/7. And that's just not realistic.”

‘It felt like we were making progress on this issue’

TikToker Amelia Montooth said in a video that the conversation around Sweeney’s body was reminding her of a more fatphobic time in society — aka, the “deranged” early ’00s — which she had hoped society had moved away from. “For a brief second, it felt like we were making progress on this issue,” Montooth stated, pointing to more body diversity in media as a sign of such progress. However, she alleged, things seem to be shifting in the wrong direction again.

“I think it’s really important to be aware of, like, the rise of tradwife content, also, a lot of the things from this election are all kind of connected to how women see ourselves, to how men see us and how we are like responding to that kind of male validation,” Montooth opined. “And we do not want to return to a society that talks about fatness and thinness or even just appearance in the Sydney Sweeney case.”

What Sweeney’s body-shaming tells us

As Plank wrote in her essay, Sweeney will likely be “fine” — anonymous commenters on the internet won’t derail her rising star, nor dampen her excitement to portray Martin in her upcoming movie. But when women see someone like Sweeney torn down for her appearance, it’s yet another reminder that beauty standards are impossible — and uniquely focused on women, who are often seen as objects to be evaluated, rather than human beings.