Sydney Sweeney Is (Not) Rage-Baiting You

According to official documents, Sydney Sweeney is a registered Republican. The news came after the furore surrounding her new ad campaign with American Eagle, wherein a “good genes/jeans” pun sparked discourse over the evident dog-whistles around this well-worn rhetoric. The whole thing has sucked all of the oxygen out of the room in ways that were wearily predictable and deeply tedious. How is it that this one decent but unspectacular actress has become a lightning rod so potent that even Donald f*cking Trump can’t shut up about her? To put it bluntly, it’s what Sweeney wants.

Most celebrities are ambitious — the job calls for it — but few are as candid in their desire to be megastars as Sweeney. Having broken through with the think-piece generator series that is HBO’s Euphoria, Sweeney has been open in her machinations, talking frequently about why she does what she does and to what aim. She did Madame Web, a notorious flop of 2024, and let the world know it was a good way for her to build a professional relationship with Sony. She and Glen Powell, an equally ambitious rising star, played up their chemistry on red carpets for Anyone But You, happy to let the press run riot with romance speculation (which didn’t pay off greatly for Powell’s then-girlfriend). Her movie choices cover genre and audience appeal in a savvy way, from rom-com to horror to indie darling. This coming awards season, she’ll release Christy, a boxing biopic that required her to undergo a physical transformation. The Oscar headlines write themselves.

The savviness extends to her off-set work. She garnered a lot of headlines with a partnership with a soap company that claimed each new bar contained some of Sweeney’s used bathwater. It was gross and obviously nonsense, but it worked. American Eagle jeans using a creepy dog whistle pun didn’t seem that different, but it was the reactions that proved most revealing. Sex sells. So does outrage. And if you’re young, hot, skinny, and look like what the past century of the entertainment business has dictated to be the ideal beauty, you can go far. Sweeney’s not unaware of that. Being cleavage-forward has its benefits.

To put it bluntly, and maybe a touch glibly, I don’t think Sydney is for the girls. Sabrina Carpenter got a lot of flak for her new album cover and its kinky portrayal of submission, but her music is undoubtedly feisty and snarky and made with a feminine audience in mind. Straight dudes don’t really care about Carpenter, but with Sweeney, you can see who she’s appealing to. The bath water crap? For straight guys, 100%. You can call it a clever way to subvert expectations or to just cash in on the ways that women will always be leered at, but at what point does the curtain fully open to reveal that there was never any irony behind it? Sometimes, the male gaze is just the male gaze.

There’s nothing right-wing or anti-woke about having boobs or showing them off as you please. Sometimes biology just blesses/curses you, and you play with the cards you’ve been dealt. Even now, I’m still hesitant to decry Sweeney’s self-branding of her sex appeal as something truly insidious because we know what happens when femme desire and sexuality is appropriated in this manner. We’ve got so many examples, past and present, of women who dared to show a little flesh and were fetishised, scolded, and punished for it, with no consideration given to how the inescapable thrall of patriarchy defines our every move. Still, I wonder what went through Sweeney’s head when she saw how FOX News and all of these misogynistic weirdos began to herald her as a figurehead of ‘true’ femininity. Even if she were politically aligned with these people, did she find it odd how her boobs were treated like idols? Or how she was constantly contrasted with trans women as a way to reinforce a broken binary forced into law?

What does one get from being that woman? There’s money to be made, of course, and Sweeney is not unaware of how controversy can sell. American Eagle has discussed how it was Sweeney who told them she wanted to push the ad campaign further to achieve all those headlines. Sales have apparently been robust since the campaign, too — another reminder that the so-called culture war is and always has been for the benefit of the hard right. The vague illusion of apoliticalness is often demanded of celebrities, as rocking the boat can be financially detrimental.

But the Trump age is one defined by its hijacking of pop culture and the overwrought realigning of its foundations to reinforce a false binary of freedom vs. woke. Everything is fair game to dominate in this system, from starting an online war over female Ghostbusters to the frighteningly successful decimation of DEI policies. There is an obvious allure in being, if not a figurehead to this movement, then at least somewhat immune to its dangers. But of course, Sweeney is not immune. It takes very little for these creeps to turn on even their favourites.

We all know that cancel culture isn’t real, and that Hollywood is not the liberal bastion it’s often described as. So, I don’t foresee a future where Sweeney is shunned by her peers or studio heads because she’s a Republican. How many of those cigar-chomping union haters voted for Trump last year? Nor do I see Sweeney being forced down the Gina Carano or Zachary Levi route into crappy low-rent right-wing productions with no audience appeal beyond racist echo chambers. I do, however, think a lot about whether or not Sweeney is fully prepared to be this kind of hyper-political figurehead, even if the work doesn’t reflect that. The right wing was so desperate to latch onto her as the figurehead of Aryan femininity and anti-woke sexiness long before we knew how she voted. Sweeney kept quiet about that, understandably so, although in hindsight it feels more awkward. But it’s a very different prospect to have your votes pinned to your CV, and to have everyone else project onto that what they believe you represent.

Most people won’t care, frankly. We can’t get people to stop supporting rapists and transphobes, so why the hell would they suddenly take a stand on this? Gen-Z has also shown a propensity for the hard right, with many younger voters going for Republican candidates and embracing MAGA rhetoric. But for those who do care, their thoughts are going to be what defines how Sweeney is discoursed. Could she play a queer character without the LGBTQ+ community calling her a self-serving hypocrite, or her Trump goons saying she’s going woke? She’s supposed to be playing Kim Novak in a movie about her romance with Sammy Davis Jr. How does she promote that work when all the questions will be about her voting for a racist and her hangers-on echoing the dog-whistles?

There is also a very simple answer to this entire mess: Sydney Sweeney wants attention. She’ll get it because she’s good at playing the game at this moment in time, when the culture is poised to explode at a moment’s notice thanks to a combination of hard-right posturing, corporate timidity, and straight-up brain-rot. Whether or not you think the American Eagle ads were designed specifically to pander to Trump conservatives is almost beside the point. Sweeney’s chosen which game she wants to play and who she wants to play with. I doubt she wanted people to know who she votes for because deniability is a key tactic for celebrities in this broken system. Still, it speaks volumes to our times that she’s doing this when, only five years ago, she would have been wearing a ‘This is What a Feminist Looks Like’ tee. For now, she’s going to be fine, but playing the game in the long term is going to be a far messier prospect. Perhaps it’s time to run another bath.