Chris WilliamsonWhy Women Hate Sydney Sweeney & Love Sabrina Carpenter
Chris Williamson
Two Kinds of Female Competition 0:00
Women have evolved tendencies toward leveling, meaning they prefer there to be no clear winner and that credit gets shared rather than claimed by one person. Men, by contrast, want rules, scorekeeping, and a clear winner. This research comes from Joyce Benenson, Marion Fisher, and Tania Reynolds. Sydney Sweeney is seen as competing aggressively and openly prioritizing what men want, without softening it by claiming to be one of the girls. Sabrina Carpenter, by contrast, self-sexualizes too, but signals constantly that she is doing it for girls, writing songs about men being manchildren and presenting herself as a girl's girl. A widely shared tweet captured this by contrasting a Sweeney football ad photo with a Carpenter Rolling Stone cover, framing one as objectifying and the other as empowering, even though the actual sexual content is similar.
Sweeney As A Feminist Stress Test 3:00
One tweet argued that Sweeney is independently wealthy, produces her own projects, owns businesses, and monetizes her own sexuality without seeking permission, yet feminist response has largely been to scold her, insisting her body is a collective political resource she must use in ways others approve of. The men supposedly enforcing patriarchy are mostly indifferent, while women police one another's choices instead. This connects to a deeper pattern: women historically downplayed achievements to avoid appearing above other women, a kind of tall poppy avoidance tied to staying safe within the group. Women compliment each other's looks then deny the compliment, and share embarrassing self-disclosures to put other women at ease, with anyone who declines being seen as too full of herself.
Male Sexuality Judged More Harshly 7:31
There is a pattern called gamma bias, where anything appealing to male sexual psychology gets treated as problematic, while the same behavior aimed at female desire is celebrated. A paper called the mismeasurement of men points out that statements like deserving sexual gratification are seen as empowering when women say them but entitled when men do. Benevolent sexism is described as infantilizing toward women, yet the reverse situation, a woman doing everything for her husband, gets called weaponized incompetence rather than sexism against him. Research from Tania Reynolds shows men are consistently morally typecast as the aggressor or wrongdoer in these dynamics.
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