Why Women Hate Sydney Sweeney & Love Sabrina Carpenter
In a Nutshell
Women resent Sydney Sweeney for self-sexualizing to appeal directly to male desire without signaling allegiance to female solidarity or feminist causes, while they celebrate Sabrina Carpenter for doing the same thing framed as self-empowerment and "for the girls." This stems from evolved female psychology that favors leveling behavior, punishes norm-violators who don't downplay their advantages, and treats male-validated sexuality as a collective political resource that must be policed. The result is a double standard where women can celebrate their own sexuality but must vocally justify it as anti-patriarchal, while men are expected to stand aside and accept the policing.
These notes were generated by AI and may contain inaccuracies.
Women have evolved tendencies toward leveling and preferring no contest with shared prizes. Women are uneasy about taking credit for a victory and prefer to play down their achievements. Men love rules of the game and need a winner and loser from very young ages, with scorekeeping being essential during games.
This is established through the work of Joyce Benninsson, Marian Fischer, and Tanya Reynolds, showing fundamental differences in how men and women compete and what they prefer.
Sydney Sweeney competes aggressively and prioritizes what men want without prostrating herself or claiming to be "one of the girls." In contrast, Sabrina Carpenter self-sexualizes but aggressively signals she is more "teen girl" and a "girl's girl," writing songs about men being "manchild" and clearly signaling she is doing it for girls.
A tweet compared Sydney Sweeney with a football balanced on the back of her boots lying naked on a bench versus Sabrina Carpenter on the front cover of Rolling Stone in thigh-high stockings labeled "Sabrina Superstar." The caption stated Sydney Sweeney is a "putter" while Sabrina Carpenter is a "diva pop."
The difference highlighted is that Sabrina does it because she feels good about herself doing it, not encompassing gender in hypersexualization for male pleasure. The distinction is that one is clearly for male attention while the other is for female attention. Even though boys will enjoy both similarly, the perceived intent differs.
Additional commentary stated Sabrina Carpenter "caters to the female gaze and takes pride in her sexuality" while Sydney Sweeney "caters to the male gaze and wants men to validate her sexuality." One critique claimed Sydney Sweeney is "promoting a campaign that denigrates female athletes," though this was disputed as not being the case.
If you self-sexualize to fight the patriarchy and signal this reason, it is accepted and believed. However, women must very vocally signal to other women that they care about their concerns and are empathetic, caring people. Sydney Sweeney has never aggressively fought the patriarchy or signaled about Palestine or causes women care about at the time. She has signaled caring about things men care about, which can be seen as leaving women vulnerable because things men care about sometimes leave women exploited.
Stephanie wrote a tweet stating Sydney Sweeney is "the funniest stress test feminism has ever encountered" because she 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. The feminist response was women explaining her body is a collective political resource and she has responsibility to use it in ways they approve of, otherwise setting women back 100 years.
The tweet concluded that women defeated the patriarchy by becoming a decentralized committee policing another woman's sexuality, scolding her for appealing to men and reminding her that individual choices must remain subordinate to what is best for women as a class. Men supposedly enforcing the patriarchal system are mostly standing aside saying "Sydney seems great. Let her cook."
The response is puritanical in style, policing sexuality, fitting with sexual economics theory. Women are celebrated when they have accomplishments but tend not to celebrate themselves. The best example is girls getting good grades in school immediately saying "I just got lucky, it wasn't me" - being humble but not wanting to self-promote accomplishments.
Given ancestral history where it was important to stay alive and not make enemies, tall poppy syndrome prevents showing you are above anyone else. This ingratiates women to other girls by saying "I'm not a threat, I'm one of you, I'll prioritize the group over myself as an individual."
When women meet each other, the first thing they do is tell each other how beautiful they look and then deny how beautiful they look. This pattern appears in Instagram posts back and forth.
In self-disclosure, women share negative information about themselves to put other girls at ease and make them feel better. On the Call Her Daddy podcast, women are encouraged to share embarrassing stories. If one woman declines to share something negative about herself, she will be shunned as being "too full of herself" and violating the code.
Women are quite groupish in their coalitional psychology, being consensus-oriented and not liking norm violators. Sydney Sweeney could have been standing for the feminist cause as a self-powered entrepreneur with sexuality out there, but her appeal to male sexual psychology makes it problematic, whereas appealing to female sexuality is fine.
This represents gamma bias where the gendered nature of something is highlighted. Sydney Sweeney appeals to male sexual psychology therefore it is problematic, whereas if she appealed to her own female sexuality that would be fine.
A paper is being written called "The Mismeasurement of Men" about scales that pathologize men about sexual entitlement, sexism, or toxic masculinity. Many items used to measure these attitudes in men are absurd things that if a woman said them would be seen as fantastic and celebratory.
For example, "I deserve to have my sexual needs gratified by my partner" - if a woman said that, she would be applauded for fighting the orgasm gap, whereas if men do it, it is seen as sexual entitlement.
Benevolent sexism is infantilizing women by liking them in ways that make them infantilized, such as doing everything for them so they never learn to do things themselves. The reverse argument is never made that a woman enjoying cooking every day for her husband and not letting him cook is infantilizing him - when he is the benefactor of her benevolent sexism, he would be described as weaponizing incompetence.
When women are weaponizing incompetence and the benefactors of men's benevolent sexism, they are the victims. Men are morally typecast as always the aggressor or wrongdoer according to research from Tanya Reynolds. Anything that celebrates heterosexual male sexuality is morally suspect in a way that other sexuality is not.
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