Negative Reaction To Sydney Sweeney Viral Bikini Photos Proves Too Many Men

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Well, it happened — the unthinkable. Men have turned on Sydney Sweeney.

OK, not all men. Just a few losers on the Internet. But still, there were enough of said losers griping about her that those paparazzi photos dominated my X timeline for a solid four days.

In case you missed it, images of Sweeney in a bikini outside her home went viral over the weekend, but not for the reasons you might think. They didn’t go viral because she looked stunning or because her world-famous ta-tas were out or because everyone really liked her bathing suit.

No, they went viral because some anonymous manbabies were personally offended that the actress looked slightly different in those candid creeper photos than she does on the red carpet.

Let’s just look past the fact that hiding in the bushes to take pictures at an actress’ house is gross AF. Sure, paparazzi come with the territory of Hollywood stardom, but even A-list celebrities should have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their own homes.

We can also safely conclude that the men calling Sweeney “fat,” “mid,” “catfish” and various other erroneous terms fall into at least one of the following categories:

They are desperate for social media engagement.
They are closeted homosexuals.
Their sexual experience has been entirely relegated to their right hand and their iPhone screen, so they really don’t know any better.

For the record, I have enough respect for you, my Womansplaining readers, to assume that you were not among those bozos bashing Sydney on social media last weekend.

But it’s still an interesting case study. Because whenever something like this happens — whenever a gorgeous woman (and Sydney is objectively a gorgeous woman) is exposed in her natural habitat as opposed to her carefully constructed glammed-up costume — it always gets people talking.

It’s as if these men just snapped out of their simulated reality and discovered what happens after a push-up bra and four hours in a hair and makeup chair.

Men Have No Idea What ‘Natural Beauty’ Looks Like

There’s a famous Dolly Parton quote where the legendary singer/songwriter/Queen of Tennessee explains how she stays looking so young: “good lighting, good doctors and good makeup.”

And my readers are not dumb or naive. So I’m sure you know that a vast majority of your favorite celebrities, media personalities and Instagram hot girls have spent some time under the knife, the needle or the artistic brush of Photoshop.

I’m just not sure that you want to believe it.

An influencer named Tallulah Rose went viral a few months ago when she described an encounter with a man who approached her to say, “You are so elegant. You are such a natural beauty.”

That was a nice thing for the kind stranger to say, of course, but it was amusing to Tallulah. Because she is anything but “natural.”

“I think a woman can take one look at me and be like, ‘This is fake,’” she said.

Tallulah then went on to rattle off a laundry list of aesthetic procedures she’s had done on her face, along with the cost of some of those procedures:

jawline reconstruction surgery ($10,000)
lip fillers
hair extensions ($2,000)
lash extensions ($200 every two weeks)
Botox
“enough makeup to season a f*cking Wok”

“Men are like, ‘They don’t make them like you these days,'” she said. “Yes they do — with a needle and a f*cking scalpel.”

Not that there’s anything wrong with any of that, by the way. Tallulah is beautiful.

If you’ve been reading my columns for a while, you know that I’m a 90 Day Fiancé superfan, and my husband enjoys laughing at this trash TV train wreck with me. There are a few women in the 90 Day franchise who have outrageous plastic surgery. And I mean OUTRAGEOUS. I don’t think their doctors are as good as Dolly’s or Tallulah’s.

“Why would anyone do that to their face?” my husband says.

But it occurs to me that he only recognizes plastic surgery when it’s done poorly or excessively. That’s why so many men pooh-pooh Botox, fillers and other medi-spa procedures — because they think every woman who gets them done looks like this:

When, in reality, a vast majority of the women deemed attractive in the media (and in real life, depending on where you live) in 2024 have some form of injectables in their faces.

See, it’s not that men love “natural beauty” so much as they just love beauty that looks natural.

No Makeup, No Problem: Guys Say They Love The Natural Look

In 2014, the online dating service Zoosk conducted a study to determine if men really do prefer women to go “all-natural.”

Spoiler alert: They do not.

The study analyzed 1,200 women’s profiles on Zoosk, and the results showed that women wearing makeup in their profile pictures attracted three times as many hits as those who didn’t.

To break it down even further, ladies who wore eye makeup were 139% more likely to receive a message than those who didn’t. Women who wore lipstick were 119% more likely to get messages than those who went without. And if a lady happened to be wearing blush, she got 24% more notes than those who went bare-cheeked.

Fellas, your words are saying one thing and your Instagram following is saying another.

Going back to our discussion about plastic surgery and injectables, though, my theory on makeup is similar. When guys say they “don’t like a lot of makeup,” they are picturing a Crayola face — a Mimi from The Drew Carey Show. A clown person with overdrawn red lips and thick glittery eyelids. War paint.

What most men don’t realize is that the “natural look” they do find attractive actually requires a lot of makeup, too.

Check this out:

So Why Am I Telling You This?

Before anyone sprints to my inbox to call me a hater, let me make something perfectly clear: I think women (especially Sydney Sweeney in the un-posed creeper photos) are stunning creatures, with or without any work done. And I fully support the freedom of all adults to get whatever cosmetic procedures, wear whatever clothing and apply whatever makeup makes them feel their best.

And it’s totally OK and normal to find these things attractive!

But you also have to recognize that the images you’re being fed — on TV screens, in advertisements and on social media — are not real life. And I think too many men, in this era of sexual stimulation available on-demand at your fingertips, have lost sight of that.

Because the Sweeney thing isn’t an isolated incident. Recently, I ran across a post from this self-proclaimed sex and dating expert who circled what he believes to be horrible flaws on the body of the two-time Esquire “Sexiest Woman Alive.”

This is a dangerous game we’re playing, fellas.

According to recent studies, Gen Z men are already reported to be having significantly less sex compared to previous generations. And if we continue to create a fictional world where we can’t appreciate women’s actual bodies — where even Sydney Sweeney and Scarlett Johansson are suddenly not hot enough — then we are DOOMED as a society.

So, even if I’m preaching to the choir here, I hope this column has been somewhat educational. At the very least, you now know more about the medical esthetics industry and makeup artistry than you did five minutes ago.

Or, hey, even better — maybe I’ve inspired you to log off the Internet for a while and give your real-life wife or girlfriend a little more credit.

‘Atta boy, Torrey.

Womansplaining is a weekly column about dating, marriage, sex and relationships.

Email your thoughts, questions, stories and gripes to Amber.Harding@OutKick.com or tweet her @TheAmberHarding.