Despite having her share of naysayers, especially with regard to her acting skills, Sydney Sweeney's popularity among men is very well-known... for obvious reasons. However, controversies seem to follow her wherever she goes, but the Anyone But You and Euphoria is unapologetic about her choices.
In a new interview with The Wall Street Journal, Sweeney shared her feelings on the controversy around her endorsement of her limited-edition soap which contained her... bathwater. The soap was a product spawned out of a collaboration with Dr. Squatch, a men's personal care company. Named Sydney's "Bathwater Bliss", idea was a response to another commercial she did with Dr Squatch, in which she, seemingly naked, was taking a bath. Unsurprisingly, the product was sold out in a short span of time.
In the WSJ interview, Sweeney defended the choice, adding that it's her way of connecting with her audiences and that it's "important to have a finger on the pulse of what people are saying."
As for the backlash, she said it came mostly from women. “It was mainly the girls making comments about it, which I thought was really interesting…," she observed. "They all loved the idea of Jacob Elordi’s bathwater,” she elaborated in reference to the candle made in her Euphoria co-star's name during the time of the release of Saltburn, in which Barry Keoghan played a character infatuated with Elordi's character, to the extent of drinking his bathwater.
Recently, Sweeney courted another controversy when she appeared in a commercial for American Eagle jeans, in which she uttered the line, "Genes are passed down from parents to offspring, often determining traits like hair color, personality and even eye color. My jeans are blue." The ad was lambasted for propagating the idea of eugenics and scientific racism associated with Nazis and white supremacists. However, the company defended the ad campagin, citing domestic abuse awareness, a cause Sweeney purportedly cares about.
Shira Tarrant, a women’s, gender and sexuality studies professor and the author of "The Pornography Industry: What Everyone Needs to Know", recently gave her two cents, in a conversation with USA Today, about the hypersexualisation of female celebrities in brand endorsements. She said, "Our culture polices women’s sexuality, profits off it at the same time and shames them for profiting from it themselves − especially when it comes to young, beautiful, talented stars like Sydney Sweeney."
On the work front, Sweeney, who was last seen in Mare of Easttown creator Brad Ingelsby-penned Echo Valley and Ron Howard's Eden, will be next seen in Christy, the biopic of professional boxer Christy Martin. She is also playing the titular role in Paul Feig's The Housemaid, an adaptation of Fredia McFadden's book of the same name.