Why Sydney Sweeney and her double D breasts are being hailed as proof that woke culture is dead

The first time Sydney Sweeney’s father saw her naked in an explicit sex scene on HBO’s provocative television series Euphoria, he walked out of the room.

Five years and many explicit sex scenes later, he is the proud father of one of Hollywood’s hottest rising stars, with a recent hit in the rom-com Everyone But You, Spider-Man spin-off Madame Web and this month starring as pregnant nun in horror film Immaculate.

Still just 26, Sweeney produces her own films and is tipped to star in the Marvel blockbuster Spider-Woman and is about to make a remake of Jane Fonda’s brutally salacious 1968 sci-fi action film Barbarella.

But Sweeney has unexpectedly become more than an actress.

The all-American blonde with blue eyes and corn-fed curves has become a cultural phenomenon; her unapologetic sexuality is embraced by the American conservative right as proof that woke culture is dying, if not already dead.

Hailed by Republicans as the poster child for a long-awaited cultural shift away from political correctness, an incredulous headline in one of Canada’s largest newspapers, the National Post, asked: “Are Sydney Sweeney’s Double-D Breasts Harbingers of Death from watchman?’

The question was hurled like a hand grenade into the cultural debate after Sweeney appeared on the prestigious US comedy TV show Saturday Night Live last month in sketches that focused on her body and parodied stereotypes about her highly sexualized appearance.

According to National Post commentator Amy Hamm, “We have been punished for years for desiring or admiring beauty — because beauty is rare and exclusive, and to exclude is to hate — or so we have been scolded into accepting by today’s diversity. equality and inclusion anatics. We are not meant to admire Sweeney’s beauty; but we did it anyway. Times are changing’.’

Anti-woke advocate Richard Hanania posted a video of Sweeney’s appearance on social media and declared, “Wokeness is dead.”

Sweeney herself claims she is baffled by the fact that she has become the living embodiment of this political crusade, saying: ‘I don’t know how to explain it – I’m still trying to figure it out for myself.’

Her body, and what it represents, is a hot topic of discussion, both in the power centers of Washington DC and in the studios of Hollywood. “People forget that I’m playing a character,” she told The Hollywood Reporter. ‘They think, “Oh, she’s getting naked on screen, she’s a sex symbol.” And I can’t get past that.’

While she embraces her body-positive apotheosis as an unapologetically sexual woman, Sweeney admits she’s tired of the constant focus on her appearance. “Sometimes I feel beat up by it,” she told Hollywood bible Variety last year. “It’s hard to sit back and watch and not be able to stand up for yourself.”

Yet Sweeney is just the latest Hollywood star on whom the American conservative right has left its mark, transforming them all into political or style icons, regardless of their personal preferences.

She follows in the footsteps of Megan Fox, Jennifer Lawrence, Elizabeth Taylor and especially Raquel Welch, whose performance in a fur bikini in the 1966 hit One Million Years BC caricatured the ideal conservative woman: curvaceous, scantily clad, submissive and barely speaking .

Born far from the bright lights of Hollywood in a small town in Washington state, Sweeney grew up in rural Idaho, where she rarely watched TV, excelled in school and, unlike her Euphoria character Cassie, never partied.

As a pre-teen, she felt “left out” for developing breasts at a younger age than her peers, an early taste of having others’ sexual expectations projected onto her, as in Euphoria. “You have a character who is examined at school as a sexualized person, and then an audience who does the same,” she told The Sun last year.

Her strict parents were religious Christians: the kind of people who now paradoxically criticize Euphoria for its blatant sexual expressions but embrace Sweeney for killing woke culture.

A self-confessed tomboy, she says, “The women in my family didn’t really wear makeup.”

Fans see the glamorous starlet walking the red carpets in Hollywood, but she says, “In reality, Sydney Sweeney is a girl who usually wears no makeup, jeans and a T-shirt, and runs around outside barefoot.”

She is the perfect blank canvas on which Americans can paint their cultural biases.

“People see what they want to see,” says Juliet Williams, a professor of gender studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. ‘We should not actually be surprised by the objectification of celebrities as a screen for our projections, because that is what they are offered to us in their portrayal of the role.

“Sydney Sweeney’s Saturday Night Live skit parodied the insensitivity of the male gaze and toxic masculinity, but unlike the British, Americans have an inability to see irony and parody.”

Sweeney started acting at the age of 12. The following year, her family moved to LA to support her Hollywood dreams. Money was tight. “We lived in one room,” she remembers. ‘My mother and I shared a bed and my father and brother shared a couch.’ Financial aid helped pay for her school and college. Still, Sweeney struggled to find acting roles and her parents divorced and filed for bankruptcy.

“When I turned 18, I only had $800 to my name,” she says. ‘My parents were no longer together and I couldn’t do anything to help.’

Her father, Steven, a hospitality professional, moved to a remote farm in Mexico without internet or cell service. He was shocked by his daughter’s explicit sex scenes when he first saw Euphoria. “My dad and grandpa turned it off and walked outside,” Sweeney admits.

She stayed in LA with her mother, Lisa, a former criminal defense attorney who quit to care for Sydney and younger brother Trent. With her recent success, Sweeney has paid off her mother’s mortgage. “My parents sacrificed so much to support my dream and lost so much in the process,” she says. “I felt a responsibility to show them it was worth it.” Sweeney found fame and Emmy nominations with White Lotus and Euphoria, but her family’s politics proved a distraction.

When Lisa celebrated her 60th birthday in 2022, critics focused on guests wearing clothing that resembled Blue Lives Matter gear — a pro-police counterpoint to the Black Lives Matter campaign — and red baseball caps in the style of Make America Great Again with the text ‘Make Sixty Great’. Again’.

It hardly mattered that Sweeney has no strong political leanings. It turned out to be a dog whistle for the American right, which was so quick to condemn outspoken liberal actors like Jane Fonda and Barbra Streisand. Taylor Swift became a conservative punching bag when she appeared ready to endorse Joe Biden for re-elected president.

Life in the public eye overwhelmed Sweeney, who suffered panic attacks in 2022 and thought she was dying. “I was losing my ***,” she told The Hollywood Reporter. She was forced to take a break to maintain her sanity. “I still can’t bring myself to shut up, and I can’t sleep.”

Her private life still invites intensive investigation. She is engaged to her production partner, Jonathan Davino, but while producing Everyone But You, Sweeney hired Glen Powell as her co-star, leading to rumors of an affair.

Still, American conservatives might be happy to hear that she shares some of their family values. “I’ve always wanted to be a young mother,” she admits. “I love acting… I love producing… but what’s the point if I don’t get to share it with a family?”

Instead of family, Sweeney has been adopted by the American right as the unlikely antidote to expanding political correctness.

She signals defeat and says, “I can’t do anything.”