Trump Faces 3rd Impeachment Threat

That disagreement illustrates why the story cannot neatly be reduced to “liberals versus Sydney Sweeney.” Some progressive commentators have criticized her advertisements, while others have criticized the people attacking her. Likewise, some feminists view the sexualized campaigns as regressive, while others emphasize Sweeney's agency as an adult woman making her own commercial choices.

What has changed most dramatically is Sweeney's symbolic role. She began as an actress who occasionally generated controversy because of “Euphoria” and her sex-symbol status. Over several years, political commentators increasingly transformed her into a proxy for arguments about conventional beauty, feminism, DEI, race, sexuality and the supposed rise or decline of “wokeness.”