I can relate to Sydney Sweeney being trolled for her looks

Sydney Sweeney is the perfect woman. According to society’s beauty standards, she literally couldn’t be more meticulously honed. With pouted lips, glossy hair, doe eyes, high cheekbones, and what looks like an effortlessly crafted slender frame, she has gone to the exact right lab and emerged with the exact right features that the world has told her she needs in order to be very, very pretty.

She also happens to be an incredibly talented, Emmy-nominated actor, one who has most recently been critically praised for her role as the former professional boxer Christy Martin in a biopic about the sporting star — personally, I’m a fan of Euphoria (“I’ve never, ever been happier!” screeches her character, Cassie, in one memorable scene). From her interviews, it also seems like the 28-year-old is a very nice and pleasant person. To be clear, that’s beauty, talent, success and possibly also kindness. Tick, tick, tick. Bonus tick.

And yet, in the last few months, Sweeney has become a lightning rod for online rage. There are rumours that she’s a fervent Trump supporter (over the summer, it emerged that she’d registered as a Republican voter a few months before Trump won the US presidency), that she might be an advocate for eugenics (blame a poorly thought-out American Eagle campaign), and that she might have brought Maga-inspired hats to her mother’s birthday party. Nothing the actor has said or done confirms any of this, but it has been enough to catalyse a hate campaign, one that reached its apex last week when the actor had the audacity to remind us she has good figure. Yes, really.

On Wednesday evening, Sydney Sweeney wore a sheer silver gown to Variety’s Power of Women event in Beverly Hills. Designed by Christian Cowan, a photo of her with Sharon Stone surfaced on social media promoted a deluge of criticism. “Dress for the occasion — it’s not Playboy,” commented one person on an Instagram post of Sweeney shared by Variety. “That dress doesn’t empower but overpower,” added another.

Sadly, this isn’t surprising. And while I look absolutely nothing like Sweeney (a tragedy on which I can only blame my parents) and am far from a Hollywood celebrity, I can relate to the way she’s being targeted. Because as women, we’re damned if we do and damned if we don’t, especially if, like Sweeney, we’re doing rather well. The same conflicting limitations are imposed on us all: be pretty but not beautiful! Be successful but not independently wealthy! Be confident but not arrogant! And so on.

These are the paradoxical wheels on which modern femininity spins. And we’re reminded of that time and time again. Take the time a distant relative made a flippant remark about how I’m often wearing “next to nothing” at parties, or the occasion when a friend criticised me for sharing too many photos of myself on Instagram. I’ve been criticised for making too much and too little of an effort at events, and don’t get me started on the way people police female writers for daring to take an interest in a wide range of subjects; sometimes I write about violence against women, and sometimes I write about shoes. That’s just me!

Remember the way the actress was shamed for the way she bulked up for the role of Christy? “Without artifice (makeup, filter, and Photoshop), she is really ugly!” read one comment on Instagram, while another stated: “She knocked up? Stung by a nest of wasps?” Sweeney has spoken out about the various criticism she has received, telling Vanity Fair last year: “It’s very disheartening to see women tear other women down, especially when women who are successful in other avenues of their industry see younger talent working really hard — hoping to achieve whatever dreams that they may have — and then trying to bash and discredit any work that they’ve done.” The actor went on to call out the hypocrisy of an industry that purports to be about female empowerment.