In defence of Sydney Sweeney’s bathwater soap

I’m not in the habit of squawking – as many women appear to be, probably inspired by Oprah – ‘You go, girl!’ whenever any female does anything, however daft, to advance herself, but I came very near to it on initially reading this in the Independent:

‘Bars of soap made from the bathwater of Hollywood actor Sydney Sweeney went on sale on Friday (6 June) and are now available on eBay for inflated prices after reportedly selling out within seconds. The Euphoria actor is one of the most sexualised stars in Hollywood and often faces unsolicited comments about her body from fans – some of whom have even expressed their desire to consume her bathwater. “When your fans start asking for your bathwater, you can either ignore it, or turn it into a bar of soap”, Sweeney said in a press release announcing her new “Bathwater Bliss” soap.’

Talk about giving the people what they want.

Sweeney is the dream girl of the hour, just the right blend of animation and anomie for a generation addled by porn and Covid. Her perfect breasts seem to be the senior partners in the alliance, the rest of her following behind them enigmatically. If we still called female entertainers dehumanising things like ‘The Body’ (as Elle MacPherson was known during her early modelling career), she’d be Sydney ‘The Tits’ Sweeney. It’s interesting to note that when women were favoured as vamps, beautiful women were allowed more depth; Lauren Bacall was ‘The Look’ and Lizabeth Scott, ‘The Threat’ – though Ava Gardner was rather rudely dubbed ‘The World’s Most Beautiful Animal’ by her studio, which I doubt Sydney Sweeney would put up with.

The idea that droplets of water that have caressed those perfect breasts (and beyond) are contained alongside pine-bark extract and exfoliating sand has caused the $8 bars of soap to sell out within seconds, only to show up on eBay for up to $2,000. Some people look askance at such carry-ons. (And wouldn’t Sweeney have made a great Carry On girl had she been a British dolly bird in the 1960s!) In the Spectator, Tanya Gold fumes ‘Sweeney does it because she is a very pure capitalist, and also an idiot’. While that even more gifted writer called Gold, Caroline, quipped to me: ‘Like relics from saints – only for masturbation, not veneration.’

But I like Sweeney’s pragmatic attitude; if you can’t beat them, let them buy your bathwater – an exquisite chef’s kiss to everything the incels moan on about. Her breasts are real rather than products of the surgeon’s skill – ‘I had boobs before other girls and I felt ostracised for it’, she has told the Sun. She didn’t ask to be born that way, and she certainly doesn’t have any control over the way people talk about them or her, most of all when they get the two (three?) things confused.

In an interview with Variety last year, Sweeney spoke of the way she is discussed online:

‘I see it, and I just can’t allow myself to have a reaction. People feel connected and free to be able to speak about me in whatever way they want, because they believe that I’ve signed my life away. That I’m not on a human level anymore, because I’m an actor. It’s this weird relationship that people have with me that I have no control or say over.’

She’s the living, breathing, bathwater-flogging embodiment of the Let Them theory, the pop-Stoicism school of thought currently making waves in the US, urging us to stop letting other people’s opinions bother us. ‘Right-wing’ women have had to put up for years with the bleating of left-wing women that they’re the puppets of men if they dare break away from elitist orthodoxies. Sweeney took on these fake feminists recently in Vanity Fair:

‘This entire industry, all people say is “women empowering other women”. None of it’s happening. All of it is fake and a front for all the other [stuff] that they say behind everyone’s back.’

She was thought to be alluding to Carol Baum, a producer and university lecturer who, according to Variety, had said:

‘There’s an actress who everybody loves now – Sydney Sweeney. I wanted to know who she is and why everybody’s talking about her. I watched this unwatchable movie and I said to my class, “Explain this girl to me. She’s not pretty, she can’t act. Why is she so hot?” Nobody had an answer.’

Other young actresses both prized and hated for their looks – often at the same time, by men who can’t have them and women who can’t be them – have turned in on themselves. Sydney Sweeney appears to be simply staring the haters down. I think it was me who coined the phrase ‘The only people who never sell out are those who have nothing anybody wants to buy’ and she’s certainly getting an earful from them now.

The Bonnie Blue business has raised questions about what ‘agency’ (a word I’ve always loathed when applied to anything but a bureau that fixes things up for people, be they dates or jobs) is when it comes to female sexuality. I don’t have any strong feelings about such shenanigans, except for feeling that you’re probably going to end up in quite a bit of trouble ‘Down There’, as my mum would have put it, but that’s why Trimethoprim was invented.

How much agency does a woman in prison have when she is forced to share a shower room with a rapist who calls himself a woman, which many feminists have been speaking in favour of for years? In the light of such weirdness masquerading as feminism, I can’t get aerated about Sydney Sweeney’s bathwater; there’s a touch of the serves-you-right, liposuction-fat soap from Fight Club about it.

Yes, I’m aware that this is part of the ever-encroaching Only Fans-isation of society. Yes, I’m very glad that I got involved in the marvellous and messy business of sex before it was warped by pornography and kink reverence to the extent that young girls appear to find it a nightmare, opting out by having their sex organs removed or identifying as boys or only doing it when in a different room, with technology as chaperone. Young people are having less sex than we did, so parasexual behaviour has increased. What we are hearing is the frustration of a song that never really starts and where the intro goes on forever.

But in a world where the ‘agency’ of the most powerless women is trampled over by transvestites and their powerful female allies, I’m not going to get cross about a pretty girl financially fleecing a bunch of dumb men. Sydney Sweeney knows that she’s popular because of her body. She also knows that she’ll be put on the shelf when her breasts no longer retain their perfection. She wants to make as much money from her beauty as she can – how is that different from what a sportsman does?

So, after due consideration of this enterprise (and though it pains me to say it – deep breath), ‘You go, girl!’.

Julie Burchill is a spiked columnist. Her book, Welcome to the Woke Trials: How #Identity Killed Progressive Politics, is published by Academica Press.