From Pup Play to Babygirl Fetish: Sydney Sweeney Outrages the Internet (Again!)

Sydney Sweeney as OnlyFans content creator Cassie Howard 

in season 3 of the HBO TV series Euphoria (2026)

Images: HBO Max

 

 

I. 

 

Other than the fact that she has great jeans [1], I really don't know much about the 28-year-old American actress Sydney Sweeney.

 

However, it's hard not to know of her when she seems to be in the news every other day, causing outrage and controversy. I don't know if she deliberately sets out to be a provocatrice, but she certainly has a talent for upsetting people and apple carts alike, which I rather admire. 

 

And, what's more, she's one of those rare individuals who really doesn't give a fuck what her critics say, refusing to apologise for her actions, opinions, or acting roles even when under huge pressure to do so.

 

So, here's a new post on the further (mis)adventures of Miss Sweeney ...     

 

 

II.

 

Euphoria is an American teen drama created and principally written by Sam Levinson for HBO, based on an Israeli miniseries of the same name created by Ron Leshem and Daphna Levin. 

 

In its first two seasons [2], Euphoria told the story of a group of Californian high school students struggling to keep their lives on track while dealing with problems related to love, loss, sex, and addiction. 

 

Both seasons received generally positive reviews, although some critics found the relentless scenes of nudity and sexual content - not to mention the substance abuse and self-harm - problematic due to the high-school setting and its teenage characters.   

 

In the third season, set five years later, the group of friends - now young adults - will be seen to grapple with more spiritual issues to do with the problem of evil and the possibility of finding redemption.

 

Whilst Sydney Sweeney is not the star of the show, she's a central cast member and the one who seems to generate most of the show's publicity. Her performance as Cassie Howard in season 2 also earned her a Primetime Emmy nomination.     

 

However, whether she'll pick up another nomination for season 3, which kicked off a few nights ago, is doubtful. Disgusted viewers say the show has gone too far by having her character dress up as a sexualised puppy and an equally eroticised baby in order to provide content on her OnlyFans channel.

 

These same viewers say the show has crossed a line by normalising extreme pornography and promoting material that is illegal as well as grossly offensive and obscene [3]. And, if what you read online is to be believed, HBO is facing a massive backlash with some calling for a total boycott of the network.    

 

 

III.

 

I might be wrong, but I'm guessing that the puppygirl scene hasn't upset as many people as the one in which Sweeney, dressed in pigtails with a dummy in her mouth and wearing a sheer top and a pair of white (nappy-like) knickers, grabs her feet and lifts her legs in the air.   

 

For whilst there will be some who will argue that canine roleplay - or pet play more generally - is the first step on the slippery slope to zoosexual activity (or what used to be termed bestiality), I think most people will concede that it's essentially a BDSM fetish and so is more about the consensual exploration of power and control rather than a genuine desire to romance animals [4]. 

 

Puppygirls may wear collars, chew on toy bones, or beg for treats, but they remain adult human females when all is said and done and whilst pup play can be sexual in nature, that isn't always the case and for some participants it's primarily a form of fantasy and emotional escapism.  

 

Besides, Sweeney looks rather fetching in her puppy dog costume; whereas, dressed as a baby, she does present an altogether more challenging image ...

 

 

IV. 

 

To be fair, the same arguments used to defend pup play can be assembled to defend daddy dom / little girl fetish (or DD/lg, as it is written by its devotees); it's all about role play, age play, and exploring power relationships and has nothing whatsoever to do with paedophilia. 

 

The babygirl enjoys receiving care and protection (and occasionally punishment) from her dominant partner. Similarly, she takes pleasure in surrendering responsibility and embracing softness, vulnerability and dependency.  

 

However, the babygirl rarely regresses to infancy; rather, she knowingly mimics childish behaviours whilst, contrary to appearances, still maintaining a degree of adult agency (as well as sexuality). Like so much else in the world of kink, it's purely performative and consensual. 

 

Having said that, the fact remains that within the popular (non-kinky) imagination babygirl fetish - unlike pup play - remains highly suspect and seems genuinely perverse. And this is why it's the second of the images above, not the first, that has attracted criticism expressed in words such as twisted, sick, and repugnant (i.e., the language of physical disgust and moral outrage).   

 

Even critics who at one time celebrated Euphoria are now clutching their pearls and insisting it feels tired and dated - whilst The Guardian's Hannah J. Davies even goes so far as to write that the HBO drama has become "a grubby, humourless work of torture porn that's obsessed with and repulsed by sex work" [5]. 

 

Meanwhile, The Telegraph's Eleanor Halls said the show was increasingly feeling "like the misogynistic fantasies of a creepy old man" and she wondered if Sam Levinson - whom she describes as a debauched pervert - isn't actually extracting some form of revenge on "America's pin-up Sweeney" by turning her character Cassie into "a caricature of an airhead sex kitten" [6]. 

 

The critical tide, then - like public opinion - seems to have turned against Euphoria and against Sweeney in particular. But, as I noted earlier, I very much doubt she cares. When she started on the show, she was earning $25,000 an episode; now, she's rumoured to be receiving just under $1million per episode.  

 

And I would rather blissfully bathe with a bar of Miss Sweeney's soap than drown in a sea of tears wept by po-faced critics and other self-appointed custodians of virtue upset by a TV show ... 

 

 

 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] See the post written on Miss Sweeney and the controversy surrounding her ad for American Eagle: dated 31 July 2025: click here. And see the Nietzschean-flavoured follow up post dated 2 August 2025: click here. 

 

[2] The first season of Euphoria, consisting of eight episodes, premiered on 16 June, 2019 and concluded on 4 August. Season 2, also consisting of eight episodes, was broadcast in Jan-Feb 2022. The third season kicked off three nights ago (12 April, 2026). 

   

[3] Obviously, terms such as 'extreme pornography' and 'obscenity' are almost impossible to define. As D. H. Lawrence noted in 1929: "What they are depends [...] entirely on the individual. What is pornography to one man is the laughter of genius to another." 

      See the essay 'Pornography and Obscenity', in Late Essays and Articles, ed. James T. Boulton (Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 236.   

 

[4] Readers who wish to know more about pet play can click here for a blog post about such on the HUD App (a casual dating platform designed for hookup-focused connections rather than long-term relationships). 

 

[5] Hannah J. Davies, 'Euphoria season three review - grubby, desperate and absolutely not worth the wait', The Guardian (13 April 2026): click here.  

      Referring to Sweeney's character, Davis writes: "The way the show handles her cam girl ambitions, in particular, feels bafflingly dated [...] while storylines around sugar babies and kink feel simultaneously voyeuristic and judgy." 

 

[6] Eleanor Halls, 'Euphoria has descended into one man's creepy, sex-obsessed fantasy', The Telegraph (13 April, 2026): click here. 

 

 

Bonus: click here to watch an official Euphoria Season 3 trailer posted on YouTube. 

 

 

Herr Nietzsche Agrees: Sydney Sweeney Hat Tolle Jeans

I think we can classify Sweeney as a member of the Nietzschean right ... 

- Richard Hanania [1] 

 

 

One final thought on the controversy surrounding the American Eagle 'Sydney Sweeney Has Great Jeans' campaign, which I discussed briefly in a recent post: click here ...

 

Even if concerns that the ads featuring Sydney Sweeney appear to knowingly play on the long and troubling history of eugenics (i.e., the largely discredited set of beliefs and practices to do with genetically improving the population by promoting certain traits designated as superior and desirable over those designated inferior and undesirable) are valid and justified - and I'm not persuaded of that - the level of anti-white rhetoric that it has unleashed (in the name, ironically, of standing up to racism) is a little disheartening (to say the least); particularly when it comes from whey-faced commentators and is born of white guilt, white fragility, and self-loathing.    

  

But perhaps, as a reader of Nietzsche, I shouldn't be surprised at this: for anti-white rhetoric is arguably just another unfolding of what in the Genealogy he describes as the slave revolt in morality, a fateful turning point in history which begins when "ressentiment itself turns creative and gives birth to values" [2]; or, more precisely, when it inverts the values of the ruling class and in this way extracts an imaginary revenge.

 

For example, noble values of strength and beauty are suddenly seen as oppressive forms of evil whilst the opposite of these things are deemed to be virtues; thus we see an emergence of so-called body positivity and a celebration of DEI.   

  

Unfortunately, things become particularly heated when framed in terms of perceived racial characteristics, such as skin colour, which is precisely how many of those who have attacked the American Eagle ads have framed things, seeing Sweeney's whiteness as inherently oppressive and offensive in itself; a malevolent and aggressive condition of being. 

 

It's almost as if they look at her image and hear her humorous affirmation of her own dress sense (and not, as a matter of fact, her genetic inheritance or racial identity) and can only think: ea est alba [3]. 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Richard Hanania on X (24 Mar 2024): click here to read the post in full. I very much doubt this is the case, but it's interesting that Hanania should write this 16 months ago. As far as I'm aware, Miss Sweeney has yet to declare her political or philosophical leanings.  

 

[2] Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morality, ed. Keith Ansell-Pearson, trans. Carol Diethe (Cambridge University Press, 1994), I. 10, p. 21. 

 

[3] I'm referencing and reversing the line from Horace's Satires (I. 85): hic niger est - literally meaning 'he is black' and often translated into English as 'he is a dangerous character' and thus intended to be understood as a warning against those with dark hair or skin. 

      

 

My Tuppence Ha'penny's Worth on the Sydney Sweeney Controversy

Sydney Sweeney in one of several ads for jeans by 

American Eagle Outfitters Inc. (Fall 2025) 

 

I. 

 

There are some news stories that, profoundly stupid and wearisome as they are, simply refuse to go away and everyone seems eager to share an opinion on. 

 

Usually, these are the kind of stories that I resist reading and avoid writing about. 

 

However, in this instance, I'll make an exception to the rule, as the case of Sydney Sweeney and her campaign for jeans manufactured by American Eagle exposes something interesting about contemporary culture (it also affords me the opportunity to place a picture of Miss Sweeney at the top of this post).    

 

 

II. 

 

Let's begin with the first charge against the ad; one made by old-school feminists who say it has a retro-reactionary feel to it, openly inviting the (heterosexual) male gaze which, for fifty years now [1], has been conceived as a bad thing in that it sexually objectifies women and leads to their oppression. 

 

I'm not sure I entirely agree with this analysis, but it's an interesting theory; one that builds upon Sartre's concept of le regard in his essay on phenomenological ontology L'Être et le néant (1943). 

 

The problem with such a theory - positing as it does the male gaze primarily as a social construct designed to uphold certain ideologies - is that it overlooks (or downplays) the biological underpinning; i.e., the fact that men have evolved to enjoy looking at women and to find certain physical traits more desirable than others when it comes to mate selection. 

 

Thus, when looking at Miss Sweeney's cleavage, for example, this might be because of some biological imperative rather than an attempt to reinforce the patriarchy (or to render her a passive object in order to overcome my castration anxiety) [2].   

 

And besides, we know now that women have eyes too and enjoy looking at bodies just as much as men (including other female bodies if that way inclined).  

 

So, let's not spend any further time discussing the American Eagle campaign in relation to this idea of the male gaze and move on to the far more surprising claim that the ads - by word-playing on the homophones genes and jeans - are secretly advancing eugenics and white supremacy and not just making a slightly cheesy joke.       

 

 

III. 

 

Unbelievable as it is to many commentators, American Eagle is facing a backlash over the 'Sydney Sweeney Has Great Jeans' campaign for the reasons set out above: that a lazy pun is coded racism and that what we're really meant to admire are not her faded blue jeans but her sparkling blue eyes and pale skin (i.e., her genetic inheritance and/or racial identity). 

 

Now, admittedly, one of the ads does feature Sweeney saying: "Genes are passed down from parents to offspring, often determining traits like hair color, personality, and even eye color. My jeans are blue." [3]

 

And that short - and overly simplistic - lesson in genetics doesn't help matters, but, even so ... I really don't think that American Eagle are dog whistling and whilst I wouldn't describe the campaign as bold and playful, neither is it Nazi propaganda reflective of Trump's America.      

     

 

Notes

 

[1] The concept of the male gaze was first articulated by feminist film theorist Laura Mulvey in her essay 'Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema', in Screen, Vol. 16, Issue 3, (OUP, Autumn 1975): pp. 6-18. 

      Well, I say that, she arguably borrowed the idea from the art critic John Berger who discussed the treatment of the female nude in European painting in his 1972 book (and BBC2 TV series) Ways of Seeing. Berger asserts that men are traditionally accorded the active role of viewer, whilst women are passive and decorative objects of desire that afford pleasure to the male spectator. 

      Thus, for Berger and Mulvey both - as well as a whole generation of critical theorists - the act of looking has been inextricably linked to power and politics.

 

[2] This is not to say men should perv on female bodies in a lewd and lecherous manner. And when it comes to sneaking a peek at a nice pair of breasts it's wrong to ogle. In fact, there's an etiquette involved as Jerry points out to George in an episode of Seinfeld: 'Looking at cleavage is like looking at the sun; you don't stare at it, it's too risky! You get a sense of it, then you look away.'       

      I have discussed this episode on TTA in a post dated 19 March 2015: click here.  

 

[3] The social media ad from which I quote and which sparked all the hoo-ha, seems to have been removed by American Eagle from its official YouTube channel. However, it can still be found on YouTube having been uploaded by Alien Ads 801: click here.  

 

 

For a follow up post to this one - a kind of Nietzschean afterword - please click here.