Latest / Unlearning Beautiful / Ep. 41 The Sydney Sweeney Ad and the Trap of Desirability
Transcript
- Kristina Bruce: There's been a lot of controversy this week about Sydney Sweeney's new ad for a sports prediction company. And some of the strongest criticism has come from female athletes who have essentially said, this isn't what women in sports looks like. They've posted pictures of themselves competing, their bodies bloody, muscular, sweaty, bruised, and push back against the sexualized image of a woman being used to sell a sports product. And I understand that criticism. And then I started thinking, there are female athletes who pose nude. They've posed nude for ESPN's body issue. They've appeared in campaigns celebrating their bodies. And many have talked about how empowering it can feel to show themselves in that way. So what makes one representation empowering and another one objectifying? And more importantly, what does Any of this have to do with the way you and I have learned to see our own bodies? That's what I want to talk about today. So let's dive in. Welcome to Unlearning Beautiful, a podcast for women tired of trying to look good enough and ready to feel good from within. I'm your host, Christina Bruce, here to help you let go of the pressure to look right or do it all right, and reconnect with your inner guidance, your natural worth, and what truly makes you feel fulfilled. Because the freedom you're craving was never in how you look. In case you're not up to speed with the Sydney Sweeney ad campaign, essentially she is naked and is just covering herself with different sports equipment. Kind of reminds me of cheerleaders in professional football, where how they look and this certain aesthetic and beauty is used on the sideline to support men in sports. The women and their athleticism isn't really front and center. It's more about how they look. And I think that that's what really riled up a lot of women, particularly women who are in sports, because they have spent their lives needing to prove that, hey, we are more than just how we look. And often women are sexualized in sports. And I've seen this. I'm sure you even come across it in commentary when you're watching a woman in sports. There will be comments on her appearance. But It also opened up other conversations too about a woman's agency. So a lot of people are getting upset about, well, Sydney Sweeney can do whatever she wants with her body. Can we stop trying to police a woman's body? And there is a lot of merit in that too, because there's a heck of a lot of conversations about women's bodies and how they look and what they can or can't do with them. So that is totally understandable. But there's a question about how women are represented in our culture. And that is the question I'm most interested in. In the Sydney Sweeney campaign, and by the way, this has nothing to do with her personally. Anytime something comes into the popular culture about this, it can be easy to attack the person. And I don't want to do that at all because literally you could replace her with anybody. It doesn't matter. It's the representation that we're talking about. So When there is a picture of someone who's nude, why is the image being created? What are we being invited to see? And so in the Sydney Sweeney campaign, it's really clear that she's using desirability and sexuality in a very classic way. And I can actually see the humor in it because the tagline is it's just sports. And yet You see this woman who's half naked and she's saying it's just sports, it's just sports, and yet, you know, men are gonna be like, ⁓ but I'm having trouble seeing it's just sports. Whereas when we see a nude photo that is not being created in that same way and it's saying, Well, this is my body and what it can do, look at the athleticism. And a lot of athletes work very hard to get their bodies in a particular shape and form to be able to compete at the level that they're at. So I think for a lot of athletes, it can be a reclamation of that for themselves versus being, I'm showing off my body in order to look desirable. Now, there's gonna be criticism for that too, saying a woman has a right to do that. And again, yes, they do. But I'm talking about the way that this affects us in our day-to-day day lives. That we start to internalize this message that I need to look desirable in order to have value. That's what's expected of me. That's what's Going to get me the attention, the validation, the feeling good enough within myself. And if I don't look that way, I feel less than. I feel not good enough. I don't feel like I have value. And the truth is, is a lot of women and a lot of girls end up feeling that way. It's what happens when we keep seeing women represented in a certain way, in a sexualized way, because the sexualization isn't really about. The woman embracing the sexuality itself, where we see it is, how am I desirable to somebody else? And in this ad campaign, let's be honest, Sydney was using her body because she knew that it had value, that it was desirable to the target market. But what happens when we keep internalizing the message that looking young and thin and quote unquote beautiful in the conventional way of the day, what happens when we start to believe that that's what gives us value and worth? Because as we can see, it has value in our society. You literally can get money. You literally can get social currency from the way that you look. And when we're seeing this over and over again, we are internalizing it ourselves. And how does that affect us? How do we feel in our bodies on a day-to-day basis? What decisions are we making about how we eat, how we move, how we take care of ourselves, what we wear, what we don't wear, when that messaging is lurking in the background, often unconscious to us. Because there is a payoff. You do get validation. You get something when you match the social beauty standard of the day. And that's why women keep doing it. We wouldn't keep. trying to make ourselves look a certain way if we didn't have some kind of payoff. But is it really the payoff that is going to make us feel safe, secure, and truly empowered in ourselves? Because the truth is is we're going to lose that value as we age. Unless the beauty standard all of a sudden changes to looking like an 80 year old woman, we're going to be losing that value. And when we have attached our sense of worth and value to that, we are going to feel like our worth and value is diminishing as well. In the case of the ad campaign, it's very clear that we're being invited to see a woman's body primarily as attractive, sexy, desirable, and something to look at. And it's a very base desire. It's not really who is this person as a human? It's an object. So it really dehumanizes the person and it becomes more just about sexuality. It's not really about Who is the woman? Who is the person inside? And so we start to see this and we can start to view ourselves this way. Where are we now starting to look at ourselves as just an object, as just this physical shell body that determines who we are? We we start to lose the sense of who we are beyond that, really and truly, because it all becomes about how do I lose this X number of pounds or how do I smooth out this wrinkle? Well, why does that matter? Really, why? Because there has to be underneath this feeling of I'm not good enough, I'm not lovable, I'm not valuable unless my outer shell looks a certain way. We're missing the worth and value to who we are as a person. We don't feel that because we've been trained to see that if I look a certain way, I get attention. Whether that's positive or negative attention. Now, some of us can actually not want to look desirable because it's given us attention that hasn't actually turned out to be positive. So that's understandable as well. And that's a kind of a whole other topic. But let's say in the case of this, it's all about that attention being positive. That being desired can feel like validation. And that validation becomes evidence that we're valuable. We can keep this connection of Our bodies equal our value, our bodies equal our worth. And then suddenly your body becomes a job, something to maintain. It's something to monitor. It's something to improve, or it's something to hide when you're not measuring up. And it's not even about what the body can do. Because what I've also seen happen in this effort to try to move away from just the pure objectification of a woman is well, my body can do this. So it's now strong. But as we know, Not all bodies are going to be strong or able. So we can't just shift now our worth and value to what our body can do. Because if all of a sudden we have an illness or an injury or disability, is that now saying that we don't have worth and value? No. We have to be able to see that our worth and value is not actually attached to what we can do. And that's a hard one to swallow because a lot of this is also my worth and value is attached to my output. To what I produce, to what I can do, being the good mother or the good friend or the good partner, whatever it may be. It's it's why it feels so stressful. It's why we're efforting and we're trying, because we're saying, if I'm not that, then who am I? What value do I have? We need to see that worth and value isn't reliant on something else, but it's inherent to who we are as a person. just by the virtue of existing on this planet. And so you'll often hear me bring this back to a baby. When a baby comes into this world and you're looking at this small little precious being, it hasn't done anything, right? It hasn't produced. It hasn't shown its value in that way. It also may not necessarily be attractive. I mean, let's be honest, some babies are really cute and we can look at some babies and say, they're not so cute. So it can't really even be about that. And yet we know on a fundamental level that they have value. We see a baby born and we know you deserve a place in this world. Well, why? Because on a real base inherent level, we know that a human is worth something and they haven't had to prove anything. And that is the true core of us at our essence. And if we keep Chasing how we look, what we need to do in order to feel okay. We actually move ourselves away from the inherent value that's already within us. So for a moment, I want you to imagine that nobody's looking. Okay, nobody's looking at you. There's no judgments about you. You can just exist as you are. How does that feel? Nobody's looking. Are you okay in your body? Are you okay as you are? Do you feel a sense of relief in that? Well, that's the truth. That's actually the truth that we've lost connection with. So we need to start to get closer to that. And what it means is we have to move away from needing to achieve. looking a certain way, needing to think we have to be a certain way in order to feel okay within ourselves. That is what is going to make life a heck of a lot easier. Because as we age, we are going to lose the things that we have attached value to. We're going to lose our appearance. We're going to lose our ability to perform in exactly the same way. And that's why I think so many people are scared of aging. I'm not going to feel okay. I'm not going to feel worthy. And so we need to see and return to that sense of value and worth has nothing to do with what's on the outside, whether somebody finds us desirable or attractive, or what our body can do. It's inherent to who we are. And so if you want to start exploring that further. I invite you to my body piece video series. It's a short three-part series where I guide you through some of the foundational ideas and practices that can help loosen this grip on your value being attached to your appearance or what you can do so that you can feel that it's inherent to who you are. You can find that at Christina Bruce.com forward slash body piece series. Or you can check it out at the link in the description below. So I want to leave you with this. Next time you're looking at yourself in the mirror or seeing a photo, ask yourself, whose eyes am I looking through? Am I looking through the perceived judgment of other people? How I think other people are going to look at and evaluate or judge me? Am I looking at it through the ideas that I've taken on about what I think is an acceptable or not acceptable body and now making it mean something about myself? Because it's possible to experience yourself in a body without evaluating and judging it. And you can learn how to develop that relationship with your body from an embodied place of your worth and value rather than through an evaluative lens. Look forward to seeing you in the next episode. Thanks for listening to Unlearning Beautiful. If this episode resonated with you, follow the show and share it with another woman who's ready to see beauty and herself in a new way. And if you feel moved, leave a rating and review. It will help this show reach more women who need to hear it. Remember, you're already everything you've been trying to become. Enough, worthy, and free. I'm Christina Bruce. Until next time.