Was Sydney Sweeney’s Oscars after-party look a subversive nod to Marilyn Monroe?

 

Look of the Week: Was Sydney Sweeney’s Oscars after-party look a subversive nod to Marilyn Monroe?

There was something uncanny about Sydney Sweeney’s look at the Vanity Fair Oscars party last night. The wavy ‘lob’ she cut last week had been sheared into a soft, blown-out bob; while her plunging, cream-colored halter-neck dress looked more like it should be wafting over a subway grate than trailing along a red carpet. In short, the 26-year-old actor bore a striking resemblance to Marilyn Monroe. Of course, Sweeney isn’t the first to try to conjure the likeness of the world’s most famous starlet — Anna Nicole Smith, Kim Kardashian, Madonna, Beyoncé and even James Franco are just a few who have purposefully imitated Monroe’s platinum coiffure and scarlet lips. But the homage paid by the “Anyone But You” star Sunday evening felt more poignant — even if it was unintentional. Last week, Sweeney made her “Saturday Night Live” hosting debut with a string of jokes centered around her sexualized typecasting, rumors of affairs with co-stars and the size of her chest. The episode — which included Sweeney appearing as a Hooters waitress in a skit that has already been watched 3.7 million times on YouTube — set in motion a spirited debate online. Were Sweeney’s breasts, as one writer for Canada’s National Post put it, “double-D harbingers of the death of woke”? In other words, by framing Sweeney’s body as a visual punchline, were SNL signalling a swing back towards ogling at and commenting on women’s bodies? “We’ve spent years being chastised for desiring or admiring beauty,” wrote the National Post’s Amy Hamm. “(But) with Sweeney, what it really comes down to is this: Sex sells.”

Since then, it’s been open season for Sydney Sweeney boob jokes, especially in comments under the actor’s Instagram posts. A torrent of reactive opinion pieces have sprung up in response. “Leave Sydney Sweeney’s boobs out of this,” wrote The Cut. “Saturday Night Live did Sydney Sweeney dirty,” read the headline of a Vanity Fair think piece, which likened watching Sweeney’s episode to “watching Barbie before her existential crisis.”