“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?
Thanks for pointing this out. I added that line at the last second, trying to give readers context if they hadn't been following the news and internet reaction to the photos. When I hit "publish," I sort of knew it might create some strong reactions in folks. But I was in a rush to get it out and get to my next bit of work. I'm sorry for being so reckless. If I were to rewrite that again, I'd say that that inner 11-year-old part of me felt relieved to learn that info about her the role she was training for. My adult self respects that her body can change for any reason (like all of our bodies are constantly changing) and that to think otherwise would be fat-phobic. Thanks again for being honest and transparent with your feedback.
Thank you for responding, I really appreciate it. One of the things about moving away from all the rubbish we are programmed to believe about women and their worth according to body size and type is that it’s so ingrained to believe that weight gain or being above the tiniest size = failure and loss of worth as a woman. This hurts us all (especially women). Our bodies do not exist to be avaluated by men ~ they carry us through life.
Many women are undernourished, and many women aggressively exercise and cosmetically alter their bodies because there is so much judgement from the outside world, and that judgement becomes internalised. The impacts on women’s health is not to be underestimated.
A great many clients in my herbalist practice come to me so depleted because their energy output doesn’t match the level of nourishment they are providing to their precious bodies.
In the long-term this causes all sorts of health problems on the physical level, and that’s not even counting the huge impact on women’s mental and emotional well-being throughout their lifespan.
The vast majority of women are not naturally meant to be so physically small, but capitalism demands it and it costs us our health and happiness.
Just want to say I reacted strongly to this too and would appreciate the author replying and engaging with this. While we can’t control our thoughts, he should examine why he believes it’s okay to judge the “rightness” of someone’s weight gain. That is something to work on and not just a knee jerk reaction that we can write off… I think the author has some unexamined fat-phobia and would like to see him address this.
That made me stop too. But I re-read it in the context of the rest of the piece - ie. his honest confession about his instinctive reaction which he later admits is the problem.
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”!
I think also once you hit around 40 and/or have kids you get a different perspective on bodies and life. You still care about how your body looks but you have more gratitude if it just works. Did my body successfully grow two babies? Yes. Is my body cancer-free? Yes. (I have a friend with breast cancer.). Does my body generally not hurt? Yes. (My elderly mom struggled with back pain.) I think the fixation on how bodies look tends to be more pronounced in the young.
The whole Sydney Sweeney thing really shocked me because I couldn’t see what was wrong with her body and when I realised so many men were disgusted by her because she was “fat” it was so disappointing! I didn’t actually believe men were truly so shallow. I felt so bad for straight women. She’s beautiful! Omg
I was studying them and thinking I must be confused by the post layout because surely these weren’t the “problem” photos and maybe they were elsewhere? 🙃 She looks really good, even if we’re using the current societal standards of beauty.
When I want to see my living room in a more critical way before purchasing something new (I currently need a new rug), I take a photo of the room and study that to decide what is already working and what changes I want to make. It helps me be more objective. I’m guessing the same effect applies to how we critically assess other people in images but less so in “real life”.
Yeah I’m sure you’re right, but even then, I just can’t imagine thinking there is anything wrong with her. Maybe men believe the highly modified and filtered press photos are what women really look like, too?
I appreciate your honesty. We can't address problems like this if people can't admit how they feel.
As a bisexual woman, my reaction was very different and I've been trying to figure out why because I'm not some saint who never cares about appearance.
One on hand, it's probably because I know what it's like to be subjected to the male gaze. Men have told me in detail what would make me look better. It's not fun.
But more than that I think it comes from not consuming as many photoshopped images and seeing what realistic bodies look like (as in bodies that can exist in daily life mot just while being performed). On the internet, people see her flaws but if she was at a public beach I guarantee that so many people would be checking her out.
A potential solution is to get people used to real bodies again. Ideally in person but also on the internet. Actual real bodies not the performative "natural" posts on Insta where people are still engaging in camera tricks and "no makeup" makeup.
I think in my own marriage impossible body standards has impacted our intimacy in a few ways:
- my preoccupation with how my naked body looked kept me from being able to experience significant pleasure despite his efforts to ensure my pleasure happened and it left him feeling insecure that he couldn’t help me achieve climax. I used to lie and say I enjoyed it despite not enjoying it and he could tell I was lying because I’m an awful liar.
- despite him constantly telling me how sexy he thinks I am even after gaining weight and having 2 kids I tend to reject his compliments which puts him in a place of feeling like his words are meaningless. He shuts down and then I feel deprived that he’s not dishing out compliments despite my inability to wholeheartedly accept them and the cycle continues
- he tends to still make off hand comments and insults about other women’s bodies when they are fat (this is sort of automatic for him because of it being normalized) and then it makes me trust him less when he says he loves me despite my body also being fat — then we are back to square 1 and 2 listed above. We’ve spoken about this and he has made efforts not to make those comments but they still come out every so often because of how normalized and automatic it has been for him for so long.
He isn’t entirely to blame for my own perceptions about my body, but you can see how his own perceptions and actions have in turn made intimacy harder for us. Being able to embrace and love my body and feel sexy despite it being fatter after birthing two beautiful babies is much easier said than done and his own body image issues tend to make him dismiss my challenges instead of validating my experiences and feelings about it. This type of dismissive behavior makes emotional intimacy harder for me. The issue however is that having that emotional intimacy makes my desire for physical intimacy much stronger and the lack of emotional intimacy makes me as dry as the Sahara desert
Thank you so much for this vulnerability. It’s really helpful to hear your perspective and experience. I’m sorry you’ve had to deal with this cycle in your relationship. It sounds really frustrating. I hope you realize you sharing this here is a gift to the rest of us, especially the men who read this newsletter and need to hear these other perspectives.
Of course. I wouldn’t trust a damn thing my theoretical husband said about my fat body if he just flippantly made comments like that. It sounds very difficult for both of you.
In my frank opinion, with all due respect, men are not victims of the male gaze. Female body shaming exists only because of the societal construct that benefits from female sexualisation. If people aren't working on themselves to mature beyond the teenage, horny boy in the basement, that is truly their problem. By ignoring this, they perpetuate an inhumane way of reducing women to nothing more than a body.
When men write things like this, I feel like they've never seen real women. Eesh. The only thoughts in my mind reading this whole thing was...."how old are you?" Oh my.
Any time you feel that knee jerk response to judge a woman's body, just remember how you felt when someone online said you had a double chin.
The problem isn't having a immediate response, we all have immediate, juvenile responses, the problem is putting it out there like it's something worth talking about.
Thanks for sharing this, Jeremy. I don’t think anyone has addressed this specifically, so I will. As a woman, I can tell you that the (apparently revolting) paparazzi photos, or the bulky wrestling pic could have been taken on the same day as the “thirst trap” photo above. What men seem to not understand (and interpret as “catfishing”) is that human bodies can look vastly different depending on how they’re posed. The posed bikini pic is intentionally angled to make her boobs look bigger, waist smaller (wardrobe helps with that, too), neck elongated, and arms slender, and there’s likely a skin smoothing filter thrown in there. And well, in the photos below, there is obviously zero regard for any of that. That’s not catfishing, it’s just that like most healthy women, she’s not posing for the male gaze 24 hours a day. My guess is most men don’t follow women like Bree Lenehan – she shows what women look like posed vs relaxed. And it might be eye opening for anyone reading this. She’s got a great post where she hides that she’s 22 weeks pregnant by tensing her abs and angling for the camera.
In answer to some of the questions you posed, I’m a Gen X/Millennial cusper, and by 1990 at age 10 I was already a 5 foot tall C cup but blissfully oblivious to any societal messages about my body. All the women on both sides of my family had giant breasts, so I didn’t really think anything of it. By age 12, if I was dashing into a store by myself, I started getting creepy comments from adult men about my body. And instead of thinking that was a good thing, I thought, “what is wrong with that guy?” in the same way I would if I saw an adult getting really angry with a toddler about something trivial. My dad thought my mom was super sexy regardless of how her waistline changed over the years. I somehow avoided the eating disorders to which many of my contemporaries fell victim because I was more interested in what I could accomplish rather than how I looked. I saw Kate Moss on the cover of all the magazines. My sister’s body type was much more like hers than mine. I intuitively knew regardless of a restrictive diet or intense exercise routine, my body would look largely how it looked. Think: Kate Upton. And thankfully, I fell into social circles in high school and college with women who cared more about doing well in class than about what men thought of their bodies. That minimizes the power of the male gaze pretty quickly.
I had a pound surgically excised from each of my breasts at age 20, because as it turns out, a 32H chest causes back problems. I found out later that before my reduction, the guys in my dorm referred to me as “Watermelon Tits” or simply “They’re So Big.” After my reduction, when I was down to a D cup, my (much older, white woman) supervisor told me my wardrobe–chunky sweaters, wide leg pants, knee length lab coat–was distracting, though it was clearly the body underneath that I’d tried my best to hide. Throughout my career, I continued to get comments from men in the workplace suggesting, “oh, you’re way smarter than I thought.” Which, again, says more about them than me. I love men. I’m married to a pretty great one. I enjoy genuine friendships with several others. I still adore my dad. But, the male gaze, if not met with some sense of self-awareness, does hurt men as much as women via missed opportunities for genuine connections.
PSA: Regardless of your gender, it makes a lot of sense to educate yourself about what real bodies look like and how the photos and videos you see are manipulated.
I tried to tag the author because he “liked” and responded to other comments but not yours, and I think yours was insightful. But I guess it’s not possible to tag him. Too bad.
Thanks, Susan. I do hope he sees it at some point. The unrealistic expectations put on women by men--and perhaps as importantly, by other women--is where so much of this stems from. And in the age of aggressive photo & video filters and generative AI, it can be hard to understand how "real" human body bodies look from one moment to the next.
I love that he mentioned Tyra Banks, because I actually enjoyed watching her Next Top Model show as a teenager/young adult, and have these distinct memories of her explaining the different angles to present one's body for particular effects, e.g., if you're posing in a swimsuit for men (Sports Illustrated), this is how to position your body; if you're posing for a brand to sell to women in their catalog, this is what will resonate with them... And it was never the most commercially beautiful who won the competition--it was those who could wear a lot of makeup well and pose to various effects and overall be good chameleons. This is not new stuff; humans have been sold to for many decades this way. But I don't think that many people are aware of the extent of it, and that leaves the door open to a lot of harmful thoughts.
Great post! Many thoughts! (Apologies if it's too many!) And go easy on yourself – have some pride that you were willing to get past your knee-jerk reactions – which, after all, we have limited control over – and look critically at the situation.
First, kind of tangential to your point, but after decades of these (disgusting, exploitive) paparazzi photos, I have noticed something about celebrity bodies: even if Sweeney wasn't preparing for a role, it would make sense for an untouchable goddess to become, y'know, just a regular hot person when she's not actively training. Maintaining the body she had on "Euphoria" or "White Lotus" is a preposterous amount of work, and 27, while still your prime, is old enough to make it harder than it used to be.
I remember Jason Momoa hosting "Saturday Night Live" and being shirtless in a few sketches - and he did not look like Aquaman or Khal Drogo. He looked like a really big, muscular guy with a bit of paunch, maybe 10-15% body fat. No shredded six pack. Because who the hell wants to eat zero carbs and work out for hours a day if they aren't being paid to? Sweeney could probably get back to the waistline the top photo in a couple of months with a Hollywood trainer if she wanted to, so why not enjoy living like a normal person when she has the opportunity? Food is delicious as hell.
Moving on to the meat and potatoes (speaking of food…)
"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?"
Ho boy, do I remember that Tyra Banks SI cover. I was 12 when that issue came out; it was the first one to be released after I got my own SI subscription. Really, I could pretty much copy-paste what you've written about Tyra Banks, Victoria's Secret, Britney Spears, Shannon Elizabeth and porn. All of it. Although I would have to throw the Pamela Anderson-Jenny McCarthy-Carmen Electra category of sexed-up actress-centerfolds in there as well. (Which is arguably even more toxic since their bodies were unattainable to ANYBODY without surgery.)
But, I don't know - I never really felt like I "deserved" a Playboy model, I never expected that I would date or end up with one, and I never thought that real-life women were undesirable. I've always found, like, most women born in my broader age cohort pretty attractive? And I am happily married to someone who isn't going to be appearing on any catalog covers.
A lot of this just comes down to values I learned from my parents: what is, and what isn't important about a person. What is, and what isn't, a good thing to judge a person over. Parents can override a lot of societal radiation if they raise their kids to resist it. But of course, it's hard to do, and not everybody knows how to do it or even wants to, so it's no kind of large-scale solution. Something needs to change at a higher level.
I enjoyed the post a lot, and I really like the subjects you focus on, and I agree with you on most points. But I do think we should be very, very, very careful about “pathologizing” the male gaze. It comes very close to thought policing - policing of incredibly natural thoughts, no less - and it puts a lot of men on the defensive. And male defensiveness is a central political problem right now. We shouldn’t judge someone for having what is, basically, a preprogrammed biological reaction to a stimulus.
What is important is how you treat people, and what you say about people. It's even okay to be a little bit sad if Sweeney's ratios are a bit off if you're not out publicly acting like it's offensive to you, and if you recognize that your opinion on the matter doesn't matter at all, to anyone. A lot of the sick stuff that goes on in the typical male brain just needs to be compartmentalized, not eradicated.
Look, I still really like pornography. I think porn puts young men at serious risk for various types of sexual dysfunction, but I don't think it has to necessarily portend relationship dysfunction (or that it’s even necessarily correlated with it.) And I don’t think treating them like they’re doing something wrong by enjoying it is going to help anything. I think we need to focus on helping men build real-world relationships, and hopefully the stuff on the screen will take care of itself, one way or another.
One final aside: It's actually kind of insane how little we talk about porn, considering how ubiquitous it is and how large sex looms in human psychology. Much of the structure of our society is the result of ancient sexual politics, and the internet has laid the existing models to waste. I mean, I'm just some guy and I've probably seen more boobs in my life than Genghis Khan or Wilt Chamberlin. That does something to your brain, and we are kind of just pretending it didn’t happen. I hope you write about it more!
Thanks for reading and commenting! I resonate with so much of it. I'm actually thinking about writing about porn again next week. That point about seeing more boobs than Genghis Khan had me laughing (and thinking) lol. It's wild!
Anyone who looked at her and thought she was chunky, unattractive, etc, needs to get their fucking eyes checked. She looks like a beautiful woman in a swimsuit. The fuck is wrong with people?????
Thanks for sharing this, I’ve come unattached from my own need for the male gaze (which has been a journey to say the least!) and I didn’t find this triggering. I felt sad for younger you who spent so much time alone, and sad and angry too for the way our society conditions women to be hyper fixated on our looks and men to as well, while simultaneously using our bodies as objects to bring themselves temporarily pleasure.
I think what you are doing here is the anecdote to objectification and porn culture. Which is to humanize ourselves. I think a healed society introduces themselves by their shadows. It keeps us
all humble and realistic about who we. I recently started homeschooling my two kids and we only have one expectation at our school, it’s that we show up in truth.
The idea of spying on people and disturbing photos without consent should be considered a crime. If they are a public figure in public, sure but it’s really creepy to invade someone’s privacy on their own property.
This post caught my attention because even I as a woman find myself innately judging other women for their bodies. I was curious to hear someone else’s thought process when they do the same. It wasn’t until I was half way through that I realized this article was written by a man. Although I can’t say it is more or less vulnerable for a man to admit his judgment than it is for a woman; I have a lot of respect for you acknowledging the negative condition that men (and women) have about others body images and taking the time to reflect on it and share. This was well written. Thank you
Interesting, since I am working out myself and working hard to become a 💫muscle mommy💫 (yes this is not a term I use seriously), my first thought to those pics were omg those arms
Tbh, this whole discussion and people commenting on her body makes me upset and sad as fuck. Maybe i am naive but i can not even understand in what world this is not a normal, well not even normal, "good" body. Makes me seriously wonder what is wrong with society (well do not answer that)
Glad you are naming loneliness here. Such an important piece of body obsessed culture we live in. We all need to fit in. And bodies can be a place to play out a fantasy- feeling like we will be loved if we look a certain way or have a partner who looks a certain way. Not easy to admit these thoughts. Thanks for sharing!
“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?
Thanks for pointing this out. I added that line at the last second, trying to give readers context if they hadn't been following the news and internet reaction to the photos. When I hit "publish," I sort of knew it might create some strong reactions in folks. But I was in a rush to get it out and get to my next bit of work. I'm sorry for being so reckless. If I were to rewrite that again, I'd say that that inner 11-year-old part of me felt relieved to learn that info about her the role she was training for. My adult self respects that her body can change for any reason (like all of our bodies are constantly changing) and that to think otherwise would be fat-phobic. Thanks again for being honest and transparent with your feedback.
Thank you for responding, I really appreciate it. One of the things about moving away from all the rubbish we are programmed to believe about women and their worth according to body size and type is that it’s so ingrained to believe that weight gain or being above the tiniest size = failure and loss of worth as a woman. This hurts us all (especially women). Our bodies do not exist to be avaluated by men ~ they carry us through life.
Many women are undernourished, and many women aggressively exercise and cosmetically alter their bodies because there is so much judgement from the outside world, and that judgement becomes internalised. The impacts on women’s health is not to be underestimated.
A great many clients in my herbalist practice come to me so depleted because their energy output doesn’t match the level of nourishment they are providing to their precious bodies.
In the long-term this causes all sorts of health problems on the physical level, and that’s not even counting the huge impact on women’s mental and emotional well-being throughout their lifespan.
The vast majority of women are not naturally meant to be so physically small, but capitalism demands it and it costs us our health and happiness.
I reacted to that too.
Honestly this kind of thinking is really not what being a friend of women is about.
Absolutely not.
Just want to say I reacted strongly to this too and would appreciate the author replying and engaging with this. While we can’t control our thoughts, he should examine why he believes it’s okay to judge the “rightness” of someone’s weight gain. That is something to work on and not just a knee jerk reaction that we can write off… I think the author has some unexamined fat-phobia and would like to see him address this.
Thanks for urging me to respond! I responded above to the original poster. Let me know how that lands with you, if you'd like to.
That made me stop too. But I re-read it in the context of the rest of the piece - ie. his honest confession about his instinctive reaction which he later admits is the problem.
I read the whole article too
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”!
It really is sad and frightening how unrealistic the expectations are!
I think also once you hit around 40 and/or have kids you get a different perspective on bodies and life. You still care about how your body looks but you have more gratitude if it just works. Did my body successfully grow two babies? Yes. Is my body cancer-free? Yes. (I have a friend with breast cancer.). Does my body generally not hurt? Yes. (My elderly mom struggled with back pain.) I think the fixation on how bodies look tends to be more pronounced in the young.
This! 100%
Yes and at this point in life I have zero patience for men making negative comments about women’s bodies. No one asked you, dude.
Thought precisely the same.
The whole Sydney Sweeney thing really shocked me because I couldn’t see what was wrong with her body and when I realised so many men were disgusted by her because she was “fat” it was so disappointing! I didn’t actually believe men were truly so shallow. I felt so bad for straight women. She’s beautiful! Omg
I was studying them and thinking I must be confused by the post layout because surely these weren’t the “problem” photos and maybe they were elsewhere? 🙃 She looks really good, even if we’re using the current societal standards of beauty.
When I want to see my living room in a more critical way before purchasing something new (I currently need a new rug), I take a photo of the room and study that to decide what is already working and what changes I want to make. It helps me be more objective. I’m guessing the same effect applies to how we critically assess other people in images but less so in “real life”.
Yeah I’m sure you’re right, but even then, I just can’t imagine thinking there is anything wrong with her. Maybe men believe the highly modified and filtered press photos are what women really look like, too?
I appreciate your honesty. We can't address problems like this if people can't admit how they feel.
As a bisexual woman, my reaction was very different and I've been trying to figure out why because I'm not some saint who never cares about appearance.
One on hand, it's probably because I know what it's like to be subjected to the male gaze. Men have told me in detail what would make me look better. It's not fun.
But more than that I think it comes from not consuming as many photoshopped images and seeing what realistic bodies look like (as in bodies that can exist in daily life mot just while being performed). On the internet, people see her flaws but if she was at a public beach I guarantee that so many people would be checking her out.
A potential solution is to get people used to real bodies again. Ideally in person but also on the internet. Actual real bodies not the performative "natural" posts on Insta where people are still engaging in camera tricks and "no makeup" makeup.
I think in my own marriage impossible body standards has impacted our intimacy in a few ways:
- my preoccupation with how my naked body looked kept me from being able to experience significant pleasure despite his efforts to ensure my pleasure happened and it left him feeling insecure that he couldn’t help me achieve climax. I used to lie and say I enjoyed it despite not enjoying it and he could tell I was lying because I’m an awful liar.
- despite him constantly telling me how sexy he thinks I am even after gaining weight and having 2 kids I tend to reject his compliments which puts him in a place of feeling like his words are meaningless. He shuts down and then I feel deprived that he’s not dishing out compliments despite my inability to wholeheartedly accept them and the cycle continues
- he tends to still make off hand comments and insults about other women’s bodies when they are fat (this is sort of automatic for him because of it being normalized) and then it makes me trust him less when he says he loves me despite my body also being fat — then we are back to square 1 and 2 listed above. We’ve spoken about this and he has made efforts not to make those comments but they still come out every so often because of how normalized and automatic it has been for him for so long.
He isn’t entirely to blame for my own perceptions about my body, but you can see how his own perceptions and actions have in turn made intimacy harder for us. Being able to embrace and love my body and feel sexy despite it being fatter after birthing two beautiful babies is much easier said than done and his own body image issues tend to make him dismiss my challenges instead of validating my experiences and feelings about it. This type of dismissive behavior makes emotional intimacy harder for me. The issue however is that having that emotional intimacy makes my desire for physical intimacy much stronger and the lack of emotional intimacy makes me as dry as the Sahara desert
Thank you so much for this vulnerability. It’s really helpful to hear your perspective and experience. I’m sorry you’ve had to deal with this cycle in your relationship. It sounds really frustrating. I hope you realize you sharing this here is a gift to the rest of us, especially the men who read this newsletter and need to hear these other perspectives.
Of course. I wouldn’t trust a damn thing my theoretical husband said about my fat body if he just flippantly made comments like that. It sounds very difficult for both of you.
In my frank opinion, with all due respect, men are not victims of the male gaze. Female body shaming exists only because of the societal construct that benefits from female sexualisation. If people aren't working on themselves to mature beyond the teenage, horny boy in the basement, that is truly their problem. By ignoring this, they perpetuate an inhumane way of reducing women to nothing more than a body.
When men write things like this, I feel like they've never seen real women. Eesh. The only thoughts in my mind reading this whole thing was...."how old are you?" Oh my.
That part of me is 11 years old.
Any time you feel that knee jerk response to judge a woman's body, just remember how you felt when someone online said you had a double chin.
The problem isn't having a immediate response, we all have immediate, juvenile responses, the problem is putting it out there like it's something worth talking about.
Truth!
Thanks for sharing this, Jeremy. I don’t think anyone has addressed this specifically, so I will. As a woman, I can tell you that the (apparently revolting) paparazzi photos, or the bulky wrestling pic could have been taken on the same day as the “thirst trap” photo above. What men seem to not understand (and interpret as “catfishing”) is that human bodies can look vastly different depending on how they’re posed. The posed bikini pic is intentionally angled to make her boobs look bigger, waist smaller (wardrobe helps with that, too), neck elongated, and arms slender, and there’s likely a skin smoothing filter thrown in there. And well, in the photos below, there is obviously zero regard for any of that. That’s not catfishing, it’s just that like most healthy women, she’s not posing for the male gaze 24 hours a day. My guess is most men don’t follow women like Bree Lenehan – she shows what women look like posed vs relaxed. And it might be eye opening for anyone reading this. She’s got a great post where she hides that she’s 22 weeks pregnant by tensing her abs and angling for the camera.
In answer to some of the questions you posed, I’m a Gen X/Millennial cusper, and by 1990 at age 10 I was already a 5 foot tall C cup but blissfully oblivious to any societal messages about my body. All the women on both sides of my family had giant breasts, so I didn’t really think anything of it. By age 12, if I was dashing into a store by myself, I started getting creepy comments from adult men about my body. And instead of thinking that was a good thing, I thought, “what is wrong with that guy?” in the same way I would if I saw an adult getting really angry with a toddler about something trivial. My dad thought my mom was super sexy regardless of how her waistline changed over the years. I somehow avoided the eating disorders to which many of my contemporaries fell victim because I was more interested in what I could accomplish rather than how I looked. I saw Kate Moss on the cover of all the magazines. My sister’s body type was much more like hers than mine. I intuitively knew regardless of a restrictive diet or intense exercise routine, my body would look largely how it looked. Think: Kate Upton. And thankfully, I fell into social circles in high school and college with women who cared more about doing well in class than about what men thought of their bodies. That minimizes the power of the male gaze pretty quickly.
I had a pound surgically excised from each of my breasts at age 20, because as it turns out, a 32H chest causes back problems. I found out later that before my reduction, the guys in my dorm referred to me as “Watermelon Tits” or simply “They’re So Big.” After my reduction, when I was down to a D cup, my (much older, white woman) supervisor told me my wardrobe–chunky sweaters, wide leg pants, knee length lab coat–was distracting, though it was clearly the body underneath that I’d tried my best to hide. Throughout my career, I continued to get comments from men in the workplace suggesting, “oh, you’re way smarter than I thought.” Which, again, says more about them than me. I love men. I’m married to a pretty great one. I enjoy genuine friendships with several others. I still adore my dad. But, the male gaze, if not met with some sense of self-awareness, does hurt men as much as women via missed opportunities for genuine connections.
PSA: Regardless of your gender, it makes a lot of sense to educate yourself about what real bodies look like and how the photos and videos you see are manipulated.
I tried to tag the author because he “liked” and responded to other comments but not yours, and I think yours was insightful. But I guess it’s not possible to tag him. Too bad.
Thanks, Susan. I do hope he sees it at some point. The unrealistic expectations put on women by men--and perhaps as importantly, by other women--is where so much of this stems from. And in the age of aggressive photo & video filters and generative AI, it can be hard to understand how "real" human body bodies look from one moment to the next.
I love that he mentioned Tyra Banks, because I actually enjoyed watching her Next Top Model show as a teenager/young adult, and have these distinct memories of her explaining the different angles to present one's body for particular effects, e.g., if you're posing in a swimsuit for men (Sports Illustrated), this is how to position your body; if you're posing for a brand to sell to women in their catalog, this is what will resonate with them... And it was never the most commercially beautiful who won the competition--it was those who could wear a lot of makeup well and pose to various effects and overall be good chameleons. This is not new stuff; humans have been sold to for many decades this way. But I don't think that many people are aware of the extent of it, and that leaves the door open to a lot of harmful thoughts.
Great post! Many thoughts! (Apologies if it's too many!) And go easy on yourself – have some pride that you were willing to get past your knee-jerk reactions – which, after all, we have limited control over – and look critically at the situation.
First, kind of tangential to your point, but after decades of these (disgusting, exploitive) paparazzi photos, I have noticed something about celebrity bodies: even if Sweeney wasn't preparing for a role, it would make sense for an untouchable goddess to become, y'know, just a regular hot person when she's not actively training. Maintaining the body she had on "Euphoria" or "White Lotus" is a preposterous amount of work, and 27, while still your prime, is old enough to make it harder than it used to be.
I remember Jason Momoa hosting "Saturday Night Live" and being shirtless in a few sketches - and he did not look like Aquaman or Khal Drogo. He looked like a really big, muscular guy with a bit of paunch, maybe 10-15% body fat. No shredded six pack. Because who the hell wants to eat zero carbs and work out for hours a day if they aren't being paid to? Sweeney could probably get back to the waistline the top photo in a couple of months with a Hollywood trainer if she wanted to, so why not enjoy living like a normal person when she has the opportunity? Food is delicious as hell.
Moving on to the meat and potatoes (speaking of food…)
"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?"
Ho boy, do I remember that Tyra Banks SI cover. I was 12 when that issue came out; it was the first one to be released after I got my own SI subscription. Really, I could pretty much copy-paste what you've written about Tyra Banks, Victoria's Secret, Britney Spears, Shannon Elizabeth and porn. All of it. Although I would have to throw the Pamela Anderson-Jenny McCarthy-Carmen Electra category of sexed-up actress-centerfolds in there as well. (Which is arguably even more toxic since their bodies were unattainable to ANYBODY without surgery.)
But, I don't know - I never really felt like I "deserved" a Playboy model, I never expected that I would date or end up with one, and I never thought that real-life women were undesirable. I've always found, like, most women born in my broader age cohort pretty attractive? And I am happily married to someone who isn't going to be appearing on any catalog covers.
A lot of this just comes down to values I learned from my parents: what is, and what isn't important about a person. What is, and what isn't, a good thing to judge a person over. Parents can override a lot of societal radiation if they raise their kids to resist it. But of course, it's hard to do, and not everybody knows how to do it or even wants to, so it's no kind of large-scale solution. Something needs to change at a higher level.
I enjoyed the post a lot, and I really like the subjects you focus on, and I agree with you on most points. But I do think we should be very, very, very careful about “pathologizing” the male gaze. It comes very close to thought policing - policing of incredibly natural thoughts, no less - and it puts a lot of men on the defensive. And male defensiveness is a central political problem right now. We shouldn’t judge someone for having what is, basically, a preprogrammed biological reaction to a stimulus.
What is important is how you treat people, and what you say about people. It's even okay to be a little bit sad if Sweeney's ratios are a bit off if you're not out publicly acting like it's offensive to you, and if you recognize that your opinion on the matter doesn't matter at all, to anyone. A lot of the sick stuff that goes on in the typical male brain just needs to be compartmentalized, not eradicated.
Look, I still really like pornography. I think porn puts young men at serious risk for various types of sexual dysfunction, but I don't think it has to necessarily portend relationship dysfunction (or that it’s even necessarily correlated with it.) And I don’t think treating them like they’re doing something wrong by enjoying it is going to help anything. I think we need to focus on helping men build real-world relationships, and hopefully the stuff on the screen will take care of itself, one way or another.
One final aside: It's actually kind of insane how little we talk about porn, considering how ubiquitous it is and how large sex looms in human psychology. Much of the structure of our society is the result of ancient sexual politics, and the internet has laid the existing models to waste. I mean, I'm just some guy and I've probably seen more boobs in my life than Genghis Khan or Wilt Chamberlin. That does something to your brain, and we are kind of just pretending it didn’t happen. I hope you write about it more!
Thanks for reading and commenting! I resonate with so much of it. I'm actually thinking about writing about porn again next week. That point about seeing more boobs than Genghis Khan had me laughing (and thinking) lol. It's wild!
Anyone who looked at her and thought she was chunky, unattractive, etc, needs to get their fucking eyes checked. She looks like a beautiful woman in a swimsuit. The fuck is wrong with people?????
Thanks for sharing this, I’ve come unattached from my own need for the male gaze (which has been a journey to say the least!) and I didn’t find this triggering. I felt sad for younger you who spent so much time alone, and sad and angry too for the way our society conditions women to be hyper fixated on our looks and men to as well, while simultaneously using our bodies as objects to bring themselves temporarily pleasure.
I think what you are doing here is the anecdote to objectification and porn culture. Which is to humanize ourselves. I think a healed society introduces themselves by their shadows. It keeps us
all humble and realistic about who we. I recently started homeschooling my two kids and we only have one expectation at our school, it’s that we show up in truth.
The idea of spying on people and disturbing photos without consent should be considered a crime. If they are a public figure in public, sure but it’s really creepy to invade someone’s privacy on their own property.
This post caught my attention because even I as a woman find myself innately judging other women for their bodies. I was curious to hear someone else’s thought process when they do the same. It wasn’t until I was half way through that I realized this article was written by a man. Although I can’t say it is more or less vulnerable for a man to admit his judgment than it is for a woman; I have a lot of respect for you acknowledging the negative condition that men (and women) have about others body images and taking the time to reflect on it and share. This was well written. Thank you
Thank you for reading and the kind words!
Interesting, since I am working out myself and working hard to become a 💫muscle mommy💫 (yes this is not a term I use seriously), my first thought to those pics were omg those arms
Tbh, this whole discussion and people commenting on her body makes me upset and sad as fuck. Maybe i am naive but i can not even understand in what world this is not a normal, well not even normal, "good" body. Makes me seriously wonder what is wrong with society (well do not answer that)
Glad you are naming loneliness here. Such an important piece of body obsessed culture we live in. We all need to fit in. And bodies can be a place to play out a fantasy- feeling like we will be loved if we look a certain way or have a partner who looks a certain way. Not easy to admit these thoughts. Thanks for sharing!