As a longtime snob/cool girl/top hater, I have a reputation to uphold. And that reputation is hating on the things everyone else thinks and likes (except The Beatles) because I am too snobbish to enjoy basic things (except mimosas).
These “basic and popular things” include everything from Taylor Swift to drag shows to cruises to boobs.
To be fair, I am not the target audience for boobs. While Taylor Swift, drag shows, and cruises are objectively of poor quality and dull, justifying any true hater’s lack of interest, women’s breasts don’t appeal for me for what should be an obvious reason: I am a heterosexual female.
I am not interested in other women’s bodies beyond, perhaps, athleticism/inspo. Certainly I’m not turned on by their bodies. I find vaginas gross in the same way gay men find vaginas gross.
Irritatingly, men and women alike feign confusion when I say this, as though heterosexuality only applies to men or as though, as a woman, I am obligated to like female body parts in some kind of feminist display (I mean, I like mine—there is no reason why I should like yours).
Thanks to porn, self-absorption, and lying women, men seem to assume all women are some variety of “sexually fluid” (stay tuned for my soon-to-be-released interview with Phoebe Maltz Bovy for more on this), which means anything from “up for a threesome”—a thing far too many men have come to believe is a routine and normal option in a sexual encounter with a female and maybe her friend (like… gross?! Why would I want to, 1) Hook up with a woman, 2) Hook up with my friend??)—to “finding other women attractive, also dishonestly referred to as “appreciating beauty.”
Men say these things and make these assumptions either because they can’t imagine seeing women any way except the way they do (I’m not criticizing—you are a heterosexual man, which means you naturally find women attractive), because they watch too much porn and porn includes endless depictions of non-gay women engaged in sex acts with other non-gay women, and/or because some woma/en in their lives tried to impress them with their completely-unrelated-to-their-own-sexual-desire “sexiness” by pretending to be into women/bisexual.
In reality, the vast majority of women in this world are heterosexual. About 99% of us are not “bi,” not lesbian, but just plain old boring “into men and only men.” And yes, while of course I have eyes and I can see if a woman is pretty or not, it doesn’t compel me either to titillation or jealousy. Ok, so she’s attractive. There are millions of attractive women in this world. So what.
This brings me to the Sydney Sweeney “controversy.” I am using scare quotes here intentionally, because I think this “controversy” is mostly manufactured and also stupid.
A synopsis for the not-extremely-online people who do things in real life beyond posting commentary about whether Sydney Sweeney’s boobs are good or bad: a sports betting app called Novig released an ad featuring, among other things, actress Sydney Sweeney, sitting naked, legs spread, on a basketball hoop, as though taking a pornographic dump.
The ad is objectively gross, unless you are a heterosexual man, in which case the ad is objectively hot. As not-a-heterosexual-man who also does not use sports betting apps, I am not the target audience for this ad. I would have never been aware of it’s existence had I not seen a stream of defenses (not criticisms of or “attacks” on) of the ad on my X feed. Upon watching it, I felt neither angered nor titillated—I mostly just felt like turning it off. Outside the temporary boners induced in the online sports betting community, I’m unconvinced any of you are actually all that interested either. Rather, I think the ad provided an opportunity for the anti-wokes to signal how cool and not uptight they are and how bad and wrong the “libs” are, by contrast.
The “controversy” is apparently storming around Sweeney’s boobs on account of a few female athletes saying the actress had “set women in sports back.” (Imagine if women’s sports were actually set back to the days when women’s sports weren’t protected as a category in and of itself! Imagine if female athletes had to compete against male athletes, thereby rendering them irrelevant in sport entirely! What a wild thought! Anyway.)
Australian surfer Felicity Palmateer asked, “How far you can put women’s sports backwards in the space of a 42-second commercial?” She told CNN that the campaign “is very damaging, especially for young females getting into sport, for females in sport, for females in general, just hypersexualized content… We want to be valued for what we can do, not what we look like.”
Australian four-time Olympic swimmer Ariarne Titmus said she was “infuriated” on Instagram:
“Not only is this a kick in the face to every woman who has dedicated her life to perfecting her craft, but every woman who enjoys sports for what it really is — teamwork, friendship, dedication, excellence, unity…”
Retired US gymnast Gracie Kramer was also “infuriated” on Instagram, writing:
“I’ve spent my entire life competing in a sport where female athletes have been oversexualized, reduced to our bodies, and forced to fight to be taken seriously for what we can actually do… To see women's sports once again being marketed through the male gaze feels like a massive step backward. We should not have to take our clothes off to convince men that women belong in sports, or that we're only worth watching if we're showing enough skin.”
To be clear, I think these responses are stupid. The Novig ad had nothing to do with women’s sports. I have no idea why a sports betting app should be expected to empower or promote female athletes. Also, as I and others have alluded to, if these athletes genuinely cared about women in sport, they would speak out against the men claiming to be women in order to cheat female athletes out of opportunities.
Unfortunately, the response from the “other side” is equally as dumb.
First, why are you behaving as though a porny ad requires an impassioned defense? As far as I can tell, the “controversy” is minimal. I had to seek it out. My entire algorithm has been endless posts pwning the libs because, idk, boobs are back. Do you really think Sydney Sweeney’s boobs are under threat of being underappreciated or underadvertised? Are you worried the company or Sydney Sweeney’s wallet will be harmed by these criticisms? Because the opposite is happening… Are you scared that ads objectifying women’s bodies will stop existing? What’s the concern here, exactly.
For some time I’ve felt the “based”/“heterodox”/”anti-woke”/whatever you want to call them—the ones once speaking the unspeakable—have gone a bit monothought. They became the cool kids in the cultural conversation (thank fucking god), ousting the fake and gay left, and allowing us all to stop pretending hierarchy, advantage, attraction, and talent don’t exist. The thought-police were out and the free speechers were in!
But, as always, everything that starts out cool goes mainstream at some point and stops being the underground thing that made it cool in the first place. Now everyone is saying that men aren’t women and calling each other retards. As it became ok to speak basic (albeit uncouth) truths and insult one another the way we did in Grade 5, the takes and insults have become less and less based. Many are no longer saying the unspeakable, but saying what everyone else is saying, knowing it will get them the clicks and likes that used to go to the wokes. It’s starting to look a lot like virtue signalling but red-pill-coded.
You can’t just virtue signal in the opposite direction of your chosen enemies and claim basedness. Getting a boner for boobs isn’t rebellious. It’s not like porn ever went out of fashion, anyway. Sorry you had to suffer a few years of fatties in Calvin Klein ads.
The worst of the responses to this non-controversy (sorry, but me having to google a dozen articles to find quotes from three athletes who expressed anger in their Instagram stories or when pressed by CNN to me does not amount to a major controversy…) has been from also been the laziest”—that being the, “women are just jealous/women hate hot women” take.
First of all, female athletes are not traditionally insecure grossos. Being extremely successful in sport will do that to you—make you confident and not fat, that is. But also… Jealousy among women is not actually all that common outside of reality TV, romcoms, and manosphere forums. At least not in my experience. Once you stop being, say, 11 to 15 years old and develop a sense of self, a personality, confidence, maturity, drive, a purpose, and/or some skill, most adult human women are not operating in “must destroy the pretty girls” mode.
The fact that incels who have learnt all they know about the opposite sex from Twitch streamers and gooner forums think that the world operates on a cheerleader/football player basis is unsurprising. But the fact that apparently grown men and women who have worked to build a reputation of “smart and worthy commentator on culture who speaks hard truths despite politically correct norms” are announcing that “ugly girls be jealous” is lazy and signals that you don’t actually have any friends.
I’m 46. I’m not jealous of other women (except those who published their books before me). My friends aren’t jealous of other women. Our friends are attractive and of all ages. I don’t feel like I’m in competition with any of them. This form of jealousy is humiliating, childish, and beneath me.
I think what’s happening here is that men and socially inept women are misinterpreting female behaviour.
Yes, most women don’t like it when their boyfriends follow OnlyFans hos on Instagram. This isn’t about jealousy. It’s about respect. Yes, most women are going to be angry if their boyfriend or husband is paying too much attention to an attractive woman at the bar. This isn’t about jealousy. It’s about respect. No, your wife didn’t tell you she doesn’t want you going to strip clubs because she is “jealous” of strippers—it’s because strip clubs are disgusting and because often men have sex with those women because… drum roll… strip clubs and prostitution are basically the same thing. What the hell do you think happens in the champagne room?
You can call that “jealousy” or you can call it “respecting your relationship and partner.” You choose your maturity level and intellectual integrity here.
The other thing I think is happening is that men assume women feel jealous of and are competing with attractive women because they are projecting.
It is men who are constantly competing with one another for access to women, constantly feeling threatened by one another, and are driven insane with jealousy on account of fear that another hotter man will fuck their girl. How do I know this? Oh, just because all men act like this all the time. It ranges from cute to flattering to insane to controlling to scary, but all men I’ve ever been with get jealous and seem threatened by other men as a result.
Women, though, aren’t constantly competing to win men. That’s ridiculous. Men are readily available to us. While women of course worry about cheating, it’s not so much about “he’ll cheat on me if he meets a hotter girl,” it’s, “he’ll cheat on me because he’s a man and he has zero standards and is led through life by his dick.”
What the heterodox, at very least, should understand is this truth: women are (generally) picky and men are (generally) not. Women don’t sleep with every man who offers. This is why men have to compete for women and not vice versa. Women know that most men will sleep with them. Perhaps not marry them, but fuck them, for sure. Being sexually attractive to men doesn’t make you particularly special—it’s ubiquitous.
This is why no adult woman is jealous of Sydney Sweeney or the sad, drug-addicted, abused young women men masturbate to in porn. Any of us could be that woman—luckily we aren’t. Our life circumstances, self-worth, and dignity has saved us from that fate.
Many of the female commentators have been just as obtuse.
Someone named Emily Hewertson, who I assume is poor at making friends, posted on X:
“The latest faux outrage over Sydney Sweeney from feminists just proves that ‘the sisterhood’ isn’t all that strong when it comes to a beautiful blonde bombshell. Jealousy is ugly, girls.”
First of all, cool strawman. There is no “sisterhood.” There is no feminist movement. We left that behind in the second wave.
Second, the only “faux outrage” I’ve seen in response to Sydney Sweeney is coming from anti-woke X users who are pretending to stand up to the “liberal feminists,” who I see nowhere. Pretending as though there are legions of “jealous ladies” up in arms about this is dishonest.
NY Post columnist Lydia Moynihan, wrote, “If Sydney Sweeney was unattractive, no one would be outraged by the photos. People are jealous she looks hot.”
She’s half right.No one would be complaining about the sexualization of an ugly woman because they would be expected to cheer her on, a la “stunning and brave,” in order to be polite. I acknowledge this point is legitimate, having watched, along with you all, the entire world be forced to pretend ugly men in dresses are hot and that being fat is sexy over the past ten years. But, the conclusion that criticism is about “jealousy” is dumb and the purpose is self-flattery.
What is happening here is that women are pretending they aren’t jealous because they are cool and hot, unlike the criticizers, who are (according to this narrative) not cool and hot. In reality, these women are insecure nerds who have never been popular and are trying to make up for lost time by pretending like women are mean to them because they are pretty.
I’m not buying it! (But it is a lovely gift for your nerdy and too-online followers.) Lots of pretty girls have lots of friends. You don’t have female friends because you’re socially inept and/or have a bad personality.
A woman name Stephanie Tyler, whose commentary I often enjoy, wrote:
“Sydney Sweeney is the funniest stress test feminism has ever encountered bc I was taught that tHE PaTriArChY reduces women to their bodies, denies them individual agency and imposes rules on female sexuality based on what everyone else thinks women ought to be. Meanwhile Sydney is independently wealthy, produces her own projects, owns businesses, chooses to monetize her own sexuality, gains power from doing it and appears completely uninterested in anyone’s permission. And somehow the feminist response is thousands of women materializing to explain that her body is AcksHuAllY a collective political resource and she has a responsibility to use it in ways they approve of bc otherwise she’s ‘setting women back 100 years’ (fucking LOL)”
Tyler adds:
“So congratulations ladies! You defeated the patriarchy by becoming an enormous decentralized committee of women policing another woman’s sexuality, scolding her for appealing to men and reminding her that her individual choices must remain subordinate to what is best for Women As A Class.”
I was disappointed by this response in particular because, as I mentioned, I often like her takes, but in this case we’ve veered into confusing radical feminism with third waveism/liberal feminism—a pet peeve of mine that will never be resolved because no one cares except me.
Third wave feminists (so, all modern “feminists”) have no problem with objectification. They love it! Sex work is work babes. Get that bag. They don’t see women “as a class”—they don’t even know what a woman is! But also, any choice she makes is fine for her and probably feminist because she chose it. This is the fundamental third wave analysis. This is why we are not allowed to say that prostitution is bad for women, for example, because it’s good if any given individual woman claims it is and who are you to dictate her personal experience getting paid to give strange men blow jobs.
I have been getting yelled at by liberal feminists since 2010 for “policing women’s sexuality,” on account of my arguments against the sex trade and against things like burlesque and pole dancing that pretend as though these practices aren’t just stripping, but are respectable art forms because choice.
Yes, the brains of third wave feminists are broken, because on one hand prostitution is an empowering choice and just a job like any other but on the other, if a man looks at you at the gym because you’re wearing a bra he is a sexual harasser who should be publicly shamed.
The response from the three to five women who were “infuriated” by the ad was not about “policing another woman’s sexuality” (do you think making this ad gave Sydney Sweeney an orgasm?) or about restricting Sweeney’s “individual agency.” It was about a few simple-brained women seeing a porny lady saying “sports” and concluding that the ad was therefore about ladies in sport. It also likely seemed a good opportunity for a platform. These women deserve ire because they are dumb and also don’t give two shits about women’s sports, otherwise they would have spoken up against the men competing as “women” in sport and in defense of the female athletes who said “Nah.”
Monetizing one’s sexuality isn’t impressive. I mean, you can do it… Obviously. All women can. Some women do, some women don’t. I chose not to, because I think it’s lacking in class, dignity, and integrity. But it’s not like a genius business move. It’s the easiest, most basic, braindead thing any female can do. I hate this “she’s being a good business lady!” take because I’ve heard it a million times over the past 20+ years, applied to everyone from the Kardashians to OnlyFans chicks, and now to Sydney Sweeney. Like wow you sold your pussy v brave v innovative.
I would love to move beyond backlashing against fake backlashes and inventing strawmen to slap down for likes. Let’s acknowledge that there can be more than one dumb thing at once. In this case, there are many dumb things:
1) The female athletes who think this ad “set women in sports back” when they can’t even define the word “woman.”
2) The “anti-woke” commentators pretending they are sticking it to the imagined (feminist) man by rah-rahing porny ads for sports gambling.
3) The same “based” hot-takers who insist on writing off criticism of female objectification/pornography as “jealousy” because they don’t want to have to consider that their own porn use or sex-buying is unethical, repulsive, and fuels the abuse and exploitation of women and girls around the world.
4) Everyone doing this company’s marketing for them by talking about this incredibly unoriginal (but effective!) ad on the internet for days (guilty, I guess).
5) Everyone making Sydney Sweeney a bunch of money, as she is in a "strategic partner and equity holder" role at Novig, which means she profits if the app grows its user base, which it has, climbing from number 50 on the App Store sports app rankings in August to number 11.
6) All the women convincing a bunch of gross loser internet nerds that their boners are brave and revolutionary and that anyone who says otherwise is trying to suppress the natural order of all things good and right.
Winner is? Novig! And I guess your dick. Based.
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