I hate that I judged Sydney Sweeney's body too
How the male gaze hurts men.
I’ve had opinions about the actress Sydney Sweeney’s body ever since she starred in HBO’s The White Lotus. I thought, Who’s that?, and looked her up on Instagram. This thirst trap was her most recent post:
I’ve been thirsting ever since. And I’m not alone. Sweeney has been deemed “the most beautiful woman in the world, according to science.” She has over 23 million followers on Instagram. Some right-wing men even deemed her blonde, blue-eyed, big-boobed hotness the “death of woke.”
So—and I’m hesitant to admit this—when I saw recent paparazzi photos of her, my reaction was: What happened? She must’ve put on some weight. Maybe she’s actually not that hot.
They were photos of her suntanning in her backyard, and they broke the internet. Not because of her hotness. But because thousands of men had a similar reaction. And then they chose to comment and publicly body-shame her:
“She looks very chunky.” “For 27 having folds in the skin after sitting is not good.” “Butterface.” “That was not the body I was expecting.” “Let’s be real here, the body is not that incredible, just saying.” “Her arms and belly are flabby, her pubic hair shows stubble, her roots need to be fixed, her booty is not firm. Nope.” “Too pale, and she needs to lose a few pounds around the middle.”
Again, I’m hesitant to admit I had a similar reaction. If I think back to the split second I first saw the photos and slow things down, it seems like some part of me got triggered. A part that expects women’s bodies to look a certain way and judges them if they don’t.
I don’t like this part of me. But it’s there. And—based on those comments—it’s there for a lot of other men too.
Body-shaming is horrible. It harms everyone, regardless of gender.
I’ve written about how one random comment about my crooked teeth on one of my Instagram posts nearly wrecked my day. As
, author of the newsletter , writes, “[The fact that] casual cruelty about men’s looks is allowable ... directly contributes to a culture in which everyone’s looks are constantly scrutinized and insulted.”But when I saw those photos, that scrutinizing, judging, insulting voice in my head chimed in. Instantly. I had no control. It was both mean and, like, scientific. Like it was studying an object and pointing out flaws. Like it had access to some universal truth about women’s bodies. And it didn’t care what she or anyone else felt or thought.
I was able to catch myself quickly and remember that the photos were unedited, non-consensual snapshots of a woman thinking no one was watching. Luckily, I had no impulse to give voice to that part of me and join in the public body-shaming. I’m fortunate to have been around women I love and admire who’ve shared their painful experiences with body shame and unrealistic beauty standards.
Yet, that little judging voice in my head exists. I don’t like it, but it’s there—and it’s clearly there for a lot of other men too. I’m curious where it came from.
The first time I remember drooling over a woman’s body was seeing model Tyra Banks on the cover of Sports Illustrated. That was 1997. I was 11. She was 23. Her body wasn’t unlike Sydney Sweeney’s. Her stomach was flat. Her boobs were huge. Her skin looked perfect. I hung the cover on my wall beside my Barry Bonds baseball poster and a wooden toy chest my uncle had built.
I felt the same thing when Britney Spears’s “...Baby One More Time” dropped on MTV’s Total Request Live. And when I grabbed the mail after school and there was a Victoria’s Secret catalog in the mailbox. And when I saw Shannon Elizabeth get naked in American Pie (1999). And when I watched porn for the first time.
It’s like that teenage part of me is stuck back then, obsessing over those early 20-something, Photoshopped, makeup-caked, skinny but curvy women’s bodies. The girls at school didn’t look that way. No real human in his life looked that way. But he had his poster and MTV and porn. He had a way to get turned on and feel more alive and less lonely. Even if he was actually all alone in his room most of the time.
There’s a feminist term for that part of me: “the male gaze,” the idea that women feel pressure to appear and act for men.
It clearly harms women. But what does it to do men? It gives us a lot of power, for sure. Women have to care way more about how they look than we do. They get body-shamed, lose out on jobs, and even experience violence if they don’t.
Yet, it also produces nearly impossible standards for the people we love and are loved by. It creates the illusion that there’s always some hotter, more perfect body somewhere else that we could theoretically have if we work hard enough, make enough money, be “man enough.”
Journalist and author of For the Love of Men
wrote:“This particular outrage is damaging to women, for obvious reasons ... But what’s under-appreciated is how deeply bad news this is for men. If Sweeney, by their own impossibly warped standards, isn’t hot enough, what hope do they have of connecting with real, flesh-and-blood women who exist in three dimensions?”
In our capitalist, patriarchal society that promotes heteronormativity and the nuclear family, impossibly high beauty standards for women are bound to make men lonelier.
It’s like we’re trapped. We’re only allowed to love—or at least express our love to—one person, a romantic partner. But because our opinions about women’s bodies have been shaped and distorted by corporations trying to profit off of objectifying women through television, social media, and porn, we’ve got this little teenager in our head that will only accept perfection.
As Plank writes, “For men, the takeaway is: Tearing women down doesn’t make you powerful or confident—it just makes you lonelier.”
I’m realizing as I write this that I’m exposing this part of myself in hopes of being less lonely. Can you relate? Where did your ideas about women’s bodies come from? How do nearly impossible beauty standards harm men too? I look forward to reading your thoughts in the comments (or you can email me: jeremy@mohler.coach).
(P.S. If you become a paid subscriber for $5/month, you’ll get my weekly Friday Q&A posts with tips for relationship issues, healthier communication, self-care, and more—plus the warm feeling of supporting my writing!)
*Note: After multiple readers shared their reactions to the word “new” in this post’s headline, I removed it, since I do not want to contribute to body-shaming. I really appreciate this feedback.
“Once I heard that Sweeney has been gaining weight to star in a biopic about a professional boxer, it all made sense”
~ just out of curiosity (and truly not trying to be mean), is it only ok to you that she gained weight because of a role? What would you think if she just gained weight for no reason?
Holy unrealistic expectations. I’m a 49 year old woman who has had two babies, one via c-section, and when I saw these “bad” pictures I thought that she looked amazing! I could only hope to look this “bad”!