Rising star Sydney Sweeney (Anyone But You) called out Hollywood for pushing a ‘fake’ narrative of “women empowering women.”
Speaking with Vanity Fair, the Euphoria actress said that women do not empower women in Hollywood, chocking it down to a talking-point pushed for propaganda purposes.
“It’s very disheartening to see women tear other women down,” Sweeney said. “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.”
“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 shit that they say behind everyone’s back,” she continued.
Sweeney said that all of it comes to what she called a “generation problem to believe only one woman can be at the top.”
“There’s one woman who can get the man. There’s one woman who can be, I don’t know, anything,” she said. “So then all the others feel like they have to fight each other or take that one woman down instead of being like, Let’s all lift each other up. I’m still trying to figure it out. I’m just trying my best over here. Why am I getting attacked?”
Sweeney was likely referring to statements made by USC Professor Carol Baum — whose credits include Dead Ringers, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Father of the Bride — earlier this year that disparaged the actress’s looks, openly questioning her “It girl” status.
“There’s an actress who everybody loves now: Sydney Sweeney. I don’t get Sydney Sweeney. I was watching on the plane Sydney Sweeney’s movie [Anyone but You] because I wanted to watch it. I wanted to know who she is and why everybody’s talking about her,” she told New York Times film critic Janet Maslin.
“I watched this unwatchable movie — sorry to people who love this… romantic comedy where they hate each other,” she added.
Baum said she asked her class to explain the Sydney Sweeney phenomenon.
“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,” said Baum.
“But then the question was asked, ‘Well, if you could get your movie made because she was in it, would you do it?’ … That’s a very hard question to answer because we all want to get the movie made and who walks away from a green light? Nobody I know. Your job is to get the movie made,” she said.
A representative for Sweeney later hit back at Baum, lamenting that the Hollywood veteran chose to attack another woman.
“How sad that a woman in the position to share her expertise and experience chooses instead to attack another woman. If that’s what she’s learned in her decades in the industry and feels is appropriate to teach to her students, that’s shameful. To unjustly disparage a fellow female producer speaks volumes about Ms. Baum’s character,” the statement said.
Several days later, Sydney Sweeney fired back with a personal salvo of her own on Instagram in which she shared a sultry photo of herself in a sweatshirt emblazoned with the message: “Sorry for Having Great Tits.”
Paul Roland Bois directed the award-winning Christian tech thriller, EXEMPLUM, which has a 100% Rotten Tomatoes critic rating and can be viewed for FREE on YouTube, Tubi, or Fawesome TV. “Better than Killers of the Flower Moon,” wrote Mark Judge. “You haven’t seen a story like this before,” wrote Christian Toto. A high-quality, ad-free rental can also be streamed on Google Play, Vimeo on Demand, or YouTube Movies. Follow him on X @prolandfilms or Instagram @prolandfilms.
