What has Sydney Sweeney come to represent as a celebrity?

She landed on our radars after appearing in HBO's Euphoria and the first season of The White Lotus. Since then, she's starred in the hit romantic comedy Anyone But You, the Spider-Man spinoff movie Madame Web and Immaculate, a horror flick that comes out this Friday. She also recently hosted Saturday Night Live. 

But people aren't talking about her movies. Instead, there has been a steady stream of think pieces about her body, her politics and why she's just a different kind of celebrity.

From the National Post op-ed that opened with "Are Sydney Sweeney's breasts double-D harbingers of the death of woke?" to fans slamming her for attending what looked like a MAGA-themed party for her mom's 60th birthday, she's no stranger to scrutiny. 

Sweeney has also been in hot water for being honest about not being able to take six months off acting and doesn't shy away from attaching her face to a multitude of brands — from Laneige to Bai.

This all raises an important question: Why is it so hard for people to be normal about Sydney Sweeney?

To help answer this question and unpack the endless discourse about Sweeney, host Elamin Abdelmahmoud is joined by Kelsey McKinney, who hosts the Normal Gossip podcast and writes for Defector, and Tayo Bero, who's a columnist with the Guardian.

We've included some highlights below, edited for length and clarity. For the full discussion, plus a chat with film critic Rachel Ho about why the new Amazon Prime show Invincible might be saving the superhero genre, listen and follow the Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud podcast on your favourite podcast player.

LISTEN | Today's episode on YouTube:

Elamin: Back in 2022, Sydney Sweeney posted these photos from her mom's 60th birthday party. Some people were wearing MAGA hats at that party. Tayo, would you remind us what happened then?   

Tayo: So she threw this 60th birthday party for her mom. She invited a bunch of her mom's friends from around the country and a bunch of them showed up in red hats that looked like MAGA hats in photos. And I think there was also some Blue Lives Matter merch sprinkled in there as well. And so, a lot of people, as expected, were pretty upset to see that. She came back and said that the message on the hats was actually "Make 60 Great Again" or something of the sort. But, of course, you can imagine, the MAGA hat signals something about a very specific political leaning in this country and the ideas that come along with it.

Elamin: Tayo, I wanted to start with that moment, because to me, that felt like the beginning of Sydney Sweeney herself being a political statement, or at least some kind of canvas for people to project their anxieties. Would you say that that's roughly where it began for her? 

Tayo: Yes and no. So I think in some ways, yes, because this was the first time she was forced to really confront her personal politics and also deal with the backlash directly. But I think in some other ways, we've also been talking about Sydney Sweeney's body for a very long time. And this goes back to her Euphoria days. We've been having conversations about how her appearance has shaped her experiences in Hollywood and the power and agency that she has or doesn't have over her own image. 

Elamin: Kelsey, why is she such an easy canvas for people to project their own politics onto?

Kelsey: She's the first blonde bombshell Hollywood has had in decades. And she's out here and she's very quiet. Whenever anyone has any questions for her about politics, she manages to defer them in a way that is very smart for making money and a little questionable in terms of what she actually believes as a person. And so I think part of the reason that people are able to project the things that they believe onto her is that she's been kind of quiet. 

Elamin: What do you make of the career choices that she's made so far that are in conversation with the way that she's thought of? 

Kelsey: I think that she is making a lot of career choices to set herself up for success down the line. I think part of the reason she's quiet politically is that she wants these big roles that she doesn't think she's going to get without them. A great example of this is Madame Web, which I did see in theatres and is as bad as everyone says it is. Sydney Sweeney plays this demure, scared high school girl, who they have dressed like she's a Catholic schoolgirl — truly, a soft porn outfit. She looks insane the whole movie. And watching it, you would think, "Here's a really talented young actress with tons of great roles. Why would she agree to do this?" And she said, "It puts my foot in the door with Sony, which is a huge corporation. And getting in with them allows me to do things down the line that I might want to do." So I think she's very strategic in her career.

Elamin: Tayo, I want to talk about the weird stuff on the internet. And I keep saying "weird," but really, it's a kind of writing that I haven't seen on the internet for some time and is now resurfacing in mainstream publications. So we have this op-ed in the National Post. It claims that Sydney Sweeney represents a threat to wokeness, specifically that her breasts are "Double D harbingers of the death of woke." You heard about this piece. Why did you think it was worth writing about? Why do you think it needed countering? 

Tayo: Well, let me first say I took no joy in having to cover this, but I thought it was important to talk about because I think it's such a good reflection of this really weird, demented moment that we're in culturally where — and I talk about this in the piece — there's this convergence of conservative pushback against "wokeness," but also this desire to elevate the specific kind of womanhood that Sydney Sweeney represents, which is blonde, beautiful, big-breasted. And as I talk about in the piece as well, willing to play to those stereotypes, even if she's just poking fun at herself. So I think this moment and this conversation was important to have because it really brought together all of those different things that we've been seeing throughout the culture in different spaces.

Elamin: Kelsey, I want to talk about a piece that you wrote a little while ago, because she's been very open about her need for hustle. And that's unusual in Hollywood. She's someone who will do branded content. If you go to Instagram, you'll see brand collaborations on every other post. It's a relatively frequent thing for her to do, but she's kind of talked explicitly about how, "If I only took these acting roles, I would not be able to afford the life that I have in L.A. My parents took this chance on me. And I'm the person who has to go out and make the money for my family." And what she's getting at is this obscure thing in Hollywood, which is that so many people in Hollywood are the children of famous people. They do not have to act. It's nice for them to do so. It's pocket money. It is not the case with Sydney Sweeney. Can you talk a little bit about how that revealed the dynamic in Hollywood?

Kelsey: She's been open and honest about the fact that Hollywood is not a place that is actually supportive financially of actresses and actors in their careers. It's the kind of place that, like, you need family money to make it work. And if you don't have family money, then you have to do ads for "Drink Bai" or whatever it is that she's doing ads for now. And I think that is reflective of a larger problem in Hollywood, which is that the money is kind of sitting at the very top of this pyramid. I think she has been pretty revealing of the fact that the money is not coming to her. And so even though she is rich compared to the rest of Americans, she is not rich in comparison to the amount of money she makes for these companies.

You can listen to the full discussion from today's show on CBC Listen or on our podcast, Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud, available wherever you get your podcasts.

Panel produced by Jess Low