It’s official. The State of the Union is…boobs.
Florida Democratic Congressman Jared Moskowitz posted — after which deleted — a picture on X of a wide-eyed President Joe Biden walking into Thursday night’s speech alongside an image of “Euphoria” star Sydney Sweeney – the photos situated so his gaze was fixed to her ample cleavage spilling out of a black dress.
Two of this week’s viral moments fused in perfect accord.
When called out by a Politico reporter, Moskowitz responded, “It was inappropriate. I took it down.”
But given the week Sweeney’s breasts have had, it’s only fitting they found their way into the D.C. discourse.
For those not living perpetually online, Sweeney’s au naturale double D bombs set off one of the brutal, bloody battles in our raging culture wars.
While co-hosting “Saturday Night Live” last weekend, the 26-year-old actress leaned into her famous bust, playing a stacked Hooters waitress in a single sketch.
In the course of the show’s wrap-up, she donned a plunging black frock that showed off her girls, bouncing as she enthusiastically dished out the customary thank-yous.
The image of the blonde’s embonpoint boomeranged online, drawing lusty appreciation from dudes. But their ubiquity then spawned something else: think-pieces mostly from conservative or heterodox women a couple of deeper cultural significance.
Author Amy Hamm argued within the National Post that Sweeney’s breasts were beating back woke culture and the clever Bridget Phetasy heralded the return of boobs for The Spectator.
“For anyone under the age of twenty-five, they’ve likely never seen it of their lifetime — because the giggling blonde with a tremendous rack has been stamped out existence, a creature shamed to the brink of extinction,” Phetasy wrote.
After which, blowback from the left flank: a flurry of indignant tweets including one from author Ali Barthwell who admitted she couldn’t get past the paywall to read Phetasy’s evaluation but called Phetasy’s premise, “fatphobia, misogyny, anti-blackness, transphobia just rolled into one” anyway.
“these weird conservatives are lifting up sydney sweeney for being a skinny cis white blonde with big boobs because they’re mad other body types have also been on television,” she wrote.
NYMag’s The Cut urged, “Leave Sydney Sweeney’s boobs out of this.”
One X commenter quipped, “Turning [Sweeney’s breasts] right into a left/right thing is silly. They’re each perfect.”
Never in history has there been a lot intellectualizing of breasts — a minimum of one singular set.
Politics aside, Sweeney took us all down mammary lane to when lad mags ruled and cleavage was king, Phetasy noted.
Back then Jimmy Kimmel’s “The Man Show” had an everyday feature of girls jumping on trampolines and Jenny McCarthy was in that white bikini. The consensus: breasts are great.
What happened? Sure Kate Upton’s overflowing cups ruled Sports Illustrated Swimsuit special from 2013 to 2014 while Jennifer Lopez and Kim Kardashian were making butts the brand new boobs.
But scoldy types called all of it objectification. Times were changing. Playboy, once the premier platformer of mammaries, stopped showing them.
The #MeToo era arrived and in its overcorrection, branded any appreciation of the classic female form, misogyny. The penalty? Profession death by cancellation squad.
Then, the body positivity movement, as a substitute of widening beauty standards, yelled, “It’s essential to love all and sundry shape. Mostly big ones.”
We heard in regards to the “male gaze” in Victoria’s Secret’s ill-fated rebrand when — in a show of self-flagellation — they hired Meghan Rapinoe as a brand ambassador.
She told The Recent York Times in 2021 that the bra giant, in its original form, was “patriarchal, sexist, viewing not only what it meant to be sexy but what the garments were trying to perform through a male lens and thru what men desired,” adding it was “really harmful.”
But concurrently, red carpets became trashy parades of exhibition. Celebrities showing off every part all of sudden, leaving no boundary unpushed or any body part unrevealed.
Butts, boobs and sometimes even essentially the most private bits. All together, an excessive amount of.
Sweeney will not be that. With a modicum of modesty, the beautiful blonde is a comparatively covered up girl round the corner — but she makes no apologies for her God-given assets.
Slim, petite and stacked, she’s a physical anomaly. Though she got here 30 years later, she looks just like the walking prototype for the Seinfeldian phrase, “they’re real and so they’re spectacular.”
And regardless of the societal implications of her bustline, Sweeney appears to be winking at us all, from the driving force’s seat. The ultimate feminine power play.