Earlier this month, Sydney Sweeney’s Saturday Night Live hosting gig sparked some mixed discourse, with several viewers calling out the writers for centering many of the jokes around her appearance.
Perhaps most notably, Sydney featured in a sketch that saw her portraying a waitress at Hooters who racked up tons of tips from male customers who found her attractive. Elsewhere, while promoting the show alongside Kacey Musgraves and Heidi Gardner, Sydney noted, “Weirdly, a lot of my fans are men,” to which Kacey replied, “Hmm, I wonder why.”
Sydney’s looks being featured as the butt of many of her SNL jokes left many people labeling the entire thing “sad” and “misogynistic” — especially given that Sydney has openly discussed how she’s constantly been sexualized throughout her life.
Back in 2022, for example, Sydney called out the people who diminish her acting skills because of how conventionally attractive she is — with her comments inadvertently sparking a conversation around the way some internet users view her solely as a “sex icon” who “signed up” for scrutiny.
And now, Sydney has addressed the constant discourse around her body during a new interview with Variety.
After being asked about the SNL backlash specifically, Sydney said of the online discourse around her body: “I see it, and I just can’t allow myself to have a reaction. I don’t know how to explain it — I’m still trying to figure it out myself.”
“That these characters are for everybody else, but then me as Sydney is not for me anymore. It’s this weird relationship that people have with me that I have no control or say over,” she added.
Sydney’s comments quickly struck a chord with fans, with several internet users expressing their support for the actor.
“The way a lot of men talk about Sydney can be so disgusting, it’s no surprise it feels dehumanizing to her,” one person tweeted. “She's not wrong. she is a fine actress and discourse online is only about her chest area and they constantly sexualize her. It gets really gross with the stuff I've seen,” someone else said.
“I find this disturbing about people. I see it in comments all the time about celebrities and famous artists, whether they’re musicians, actors, writers etc. People are so unkind the way they speak of celebrities when they [know] nothing about them personally,” one more user added.