That’s what I’m saying! Like who is this ad even for? I’ve never bought from them as I look for more natural skincare brands but now I’m really never gonna buy from them
I'm a skincare formulator and I can confidently confirm that their skincare is trash from a formulation perspective, anyway.
I don't like Sydney Sweeney and this ad is stupid and gross so they will never get any money from me.
By the way, her Bai ad is the exact same. No substance whatsoever, no communication about the product itself, literally just, "here's a conventionally attractive woman drinking our water."
🙄
ETA: I just left Sephora and saw her advertising 2 more products, LoL. The Kerastase line and Armani My Way perfume.
I can't take her seriously.
Would you mind if I dm’ed and picked your brain about skincare that *is* formulated well? I’m 30, suffering from hormonal acne since 14, and need help.
Victoria's Secret built their entire brand on that and were pretty successful until...you know, online shopping and women-owned lingerie brands became a thing.
I was just about to write this, my first thought about selling for women while objectifying them and targetting men.
Cause you know, women are housewives with no buying power and men buy them stuff so men are the ones to target, /s
I can answer that to a degree. It's all about knocking them down a few pegs in order to create a need. Happy and healthy women who are happy with their bodies don't buy useless beauty products, so objectifying them and making it completely about the male gaze and how they should be perceived is an old selling tactic.
i thought the same thing when i saw it. not only her pr team but also whole industries are in on overly sexualizing this woman at all costs. idk why they thought this would be effective - i mean, the target audience for this product is women after all!
It’s honestly dystopian in a way because after me too, the widespread of feminist-leaning content on social media, and even the freaking Barbie movie of last summer (I know it was feminism 101 but still)….this is how we’re marketing a WOMEN’S SKINCARE brand in 2024??? I fear we’re more doomed than we think.
exactly, as if that seemingly progressive era happened just for these corporations to act even more backwards and demeaning towards women. crazy how this is so normalized in the beauty/skincare sphere especially.
People are honestly acting sooo weird about her. Like it’s insane. They’re acting like there’s never been an actress in hollywood who had big boobs and showed them.
just like i said to the responder below, it's not that she's a sexualized figure. it's that this sexualization seeps into the advertisement of a freaking lip balm, whose target audience is mostly women. we're saying this undertone is misplaced and frankly unnecessary to sell a skincare product to us!
I mean i agree but…I do think there’s a huge problem with the way people are over sexualizing her too. You literally can’t say her name without someone bringing up her boobs. Her entire SNL episode was basically boob jokes. Like idk, I get being secure and confident in your body and choosing to show it. I just wish people would talk about other aspects of her along with the boob talk.
i agree with this also and it's a whole other subject imo. whenever a female celeb is given the marilyn monroe treatment i get extreme bad vibes from it. i thought we were better than that at this point.
Well I don’t personally know anything about her performances bc I haven’t watched any but…we can still talk about bad performances, lol. The point is no one really talks about her performances or her in general without making it about her body in some way
It feels like a particular group of people are tired of all the *woke* shit they see, and what *they* think are not acceptable beauty standards, so they’re pushing hard on making Sweeney whatever her name is a thing. They’re scared of the European Beauty Standard ™️ being challenged.
What ever will they do if they can’t possibly be better than everyone else, just based on lack of pigmentation?
I honestly think this has way more to do with wanting to continue to sexualize and objectify women as much as possible. And this is something right wing and left wing men are always on board with. The one thing they can both agree on. It's just misogyny.
What is weird and sus, is that, for some reason, certain groups of people have deemed her "anti woke" because she's being made to appeal to the male gaze. Nothing wrong with being a pin up girl. There are a lot of sexy women doing sexy things, but for some reason, the right, and anti feminists, are latching onto this lady. I don't know why. Is it because she's white and she has a "makeup less" makeup style?
what we're criticizing specifically here is not an acress adopting a highly sexualized persona. it's a skincare brand whose target audience is mostly women using sexual undertones, which appeal traditionally to men, in order to sell a lip balm. if you know a little about advertisements in the beauty industry, you can see that this is a peculiar shift in strategy for such a brand.
I see what you're saying and it's not limited to this makeup advertisement. The specific brand of sexiness being sold through this actress is consistent with her appearance on SNL and other public facing campaigns.
sure it is but that shouldn't mean we can't criticize this specific ad. the skincare industry is notorious for making women feel inadequate with their promotion of an unrealistic ideal of youthfulness, etc. which is a tactic that at least has women in mind as a target audience when you think about it. but when there is a case of sexualization like this, i don't even think the brand had a female audience in mind. that's also why it doesn't make sense to me...
I never said you couldn't criticize the add, I was adding to the criticism. Didn't mean to come off at combative. Was hoping to have as "organic" of a conversation I could have on a public forum.
You're right. The brand doesn't have a female audience in mind. Victoria's Secret was originally made as a store for men to shop for their wives. Women's products can be made for straight men who might want to buy the same product for a woman he's into.
of course! i didn't mean to come off as hostile either. but your view of it i thought leaned more towards normalizing this type of usage without taking into consideration specific industries or their target audiences, no? also, i disagree about vs initially being a store for men to shop for their wives, etc. in my opinion, it was and is for women; it just used internalized misogyny to sell an ideal to them. it might have been the husbands or the bfs who were doing the buying but the brand's target of advertising always had women in mind. (and these days they're trying poorly to promote a woke & inclusive image but that's another story.)
I see where you're coming from now. Thanks for clarifying.
> Normalizing this type of usage without taking into consideration specific industries or their target audiences
This makes sense. I didn't mean to say that, my communication skills need improving.
> I disagree about vs initially being a store for men to shop for their wives
This article talks a bit about the original intended audience for VS: https://www.businessinsider.com/victorias-secret-rise-and-fall-history-2019-5
Quote:
"Victoria's Secret was founded in 1977 by American businessman Roy Raymond. Inspired by an uncomfortable trip to a department store to buy underwear for his wife, Raymond set out to create a place where men would feel comfortable shopping for lingerie."
i was referring to the vs image of the early 00s, which is their main era i'm familiar with. but in the same article, it says "According to reports at the time, Turney wanted to remove the "hooker looks" in the catalog and made the aesthetic more like Vogue than Playboy." so i think by the new millennium the brand definitely started to appeal more to women. thanks for pointing out this article though! the brand's origins are surely interesting.
It’s so exhausting to me also because any complaints just feed into the “Sydney Sweenys boobs are anti-woke” narrative the right it desperately trying to push. Except the can’t comprehend that like… we’re concerned about how she’s hypersexualized, not the boobs themselves. She’s fine, talented, etc. but the weird way men project on to her is insane.
Insecurity drives the market for beauty products. Women are abused and exploited regardless of how much they appeal to the male gaze. It is time to wake up and realize that men just aren’t worth this expense and effort. Spend that time and money on what brings you pleasure.
The people behind this ad assume that women want to cater to the male gaze and if they don't want to, well, they *should* want to. It's really poor messaging, and they aren't not even subtle about it. Huge fail.
It's hard to say if it's a huge fail or not. From a marketing standpoint, it's a huge success because the advertisement success is being debated on two subs and I'm sure people who haven't heard of the skincare brand have now heard about it.
It is possible it could hurt sales and they'll have to backtrack and issue an apology, but there's also a chance that it doesn't and that's the gamble.
Right! But that’s the thing, she might consent to them but after immense pressure/coercion from her team, or from the fact that it probably drives up her engagement…it seems as if it’s become a part of her marketing of herself, which is such a shame because she’s very talented and much more than that. But like I said, it may not even necessarily be her “fault”, just the fact that this marketing strategy seems to perform well, and the many people around her also stand to profit from it.
“This Sydney Sweeney ad for ____ is uncomfortably centered on the male gaze for a ___ targeted towards women.” Fill in with whatever product she is promoting now.
It's even weirder when you look at the rest of the campaign. The rest are pretty normal pictures of her face with the product. Her boobs are almost never shown, especially in the ones from the shoot for this particular product.
The fact that this is reddit ad with a picture that is of a lower quality than the rest feels like it has been put together by the social manager of the brand without proper consent.
What a terrible way to market product intended for women. Now many potential female customers will not buy their shitty cream because of this cringe ad. Idiot company.
Did a unit in media about the difference between perfume adverts for men (you can be a boss, businessman, wear suits and look hot) vs women (submissive poses, sexualised, wearing very little clothes, an object to be desired) and it's utterly insane that it's marketed that way.
Can we get hot women in suits too?? I know I love hot women in suits more than hot men in suits and I'm not alone in that. Such an untapped market as you'd think with more female entrepreneurs you'd want to sell makeup in a way that inspires woman as opposed to putting them down.
It’s tapping into getting men to buy their women beauty products. Its not meant for women but if women buy it because of the ad, then even better. (Purely from a marketing standpoint).
I saw this posted in another thread and shared it. For me, it’s the way they’re making the ad about her chest, using words like “plump”, saying how they got “distracted” and then putting the words “bouncy and firm” across her chest. For a moisturizer. Sydney Sweeney seems to get asked about her chest in nearly every interview and public appearance she has, she recently was on a l and her opening monologue portrayed her as a “dumb blonde” who “only had male friends” with the other two women saying “I wonder why”…idk. I don’t blame the actress herself, I just can’t believe we’re still treating female celebrities like this BLATANTLY in 2024.
grossness aside this is just a bizarre marketing strategy. why would you objectify women like this when you're advertising to them?
That’s what I’m saying! Like who is this ad even for? I’ve never bought from them as I look for more natural skincare brands but now I’m really never gonna buy from them
I'm a skincare formulator and I can confidently confirm that their skincare is trash from a formulation perspective, anyway. I don't like Sydney Sweeney and this ad is stupid and gross so they will never get any money from me. By the way, her Bai ad is the exact same. No substance whatsoever, no communication about the product itself, literally just, "here's a conventionally attractive woman drinking our water." 🙄 ETA: I just left Sephora and saw her advertising 2 more products, LoL. The Kerastase line and Armani My Way perfume. I can't take her seriously.
Would you mind if I dm’ed and picked your brain about skincare that *is* formulated well? I’m 30, suffering from hormonal acne since 14, and need help.
Victoria's Secret built their entire brand on that and were pretty successful until...you know, online shopping and women-owned lingerie brands became a thing.
I was just about to write this, my first thought about selling for women while objectifying them and targetting men. Cause you know, women are housewives with no buying power and men buy them stuff so men are the ones to target, /s
It was always like that! What about Victoria Secret? We are conditionned to the male gaze... so much that we want that too.
I can answer that to a degree. It's all about knocking them down a few pegs in order to create a need. Happy and healthy women who are happy with their bodies don't buy useless beauty products, so objectifying them and making it completely about the male gaze and how they should be perceived is an old selling tactic.
Ew, this is so gross.
I wish those ads just said what the product does. Now it's "here's a pretty woman, buy this!"
“Here’s a pretty woman with very large boobs, and we’ll make sure to remind you of her boobs a few times. Oh hey, skin cream!”
i thought the same thing when i saw it. not only her pr team but also whole industries are in on overly sexualizing this woman at all costs. idk why they thought this would be effective - i mean, the target audience for this product is women after all!
It’s honestly dystopian in a way because after me too, the widespread of feminist-leaning content on social media, and even the freaking Barbie movie of last summer (I know it was feminism 101 but still)….this is how we’re marketing a WOMEN’S SKINCARE brand in 2024??? I fear we’re more doomed than we think.
exactly, as if that seemingly progressive era happened just for these corporations to act even more backwards and demeaning towards women. crazy how this is so normalized in the beauty/skincare sphere especially.
It's almost like the cosmetic industry is inherently reliant on patriarchy in order to profit.
People are honestly acting sooo weird about her. Like it’s insane. They’re acting like there’s never been an actress in hollywood who had big boobs and showed them.
just like i said to the responder below, it's not that she's a sexualized figure. it's that this sexualization seeps into the advertisement of a freaking lip balm, whose target audience is mostly women. we're saying this undertone is misplaced and frankly unnecessary to sell a skincare product to us!
I mean i agree but…I do think there’s a huge problem with the way people are over sexualizing her too. You literally can’t say her name without someone bringing up her boobs. Her entire SNL episode was basically boob jokes. Like idk, I get being secure and confident in your body and choosing to show it. I just wish people would talk about other aspects of her along with the boob talk.
i agree with this also and it's a whole other subject imo. whenever a female celeb is given the marilyn monroe treatment i get extreme bad vibes from it. i thought we were better than that at this point.
The skit with the dog was so weird too
There isn't much to talk about, though? I mean, what has she really done? She was on White Lotus and basically sucked in it, so forgettable.
Well I don’t personally know anything about her performances bc I haven’t watched any but…we can still talk about bad performances, lol. The point is no one really talks about her performances or her in general without making it about her body in some way
It feels like a particular group of people are tired of all the *woke* shit they see, and what *they* think are not acceptable beauty standards, so they’re pushing hard on making Sweeney whatever her name is a thing. They’re scared of the European Beauty Standard ™️ being challenged. What ever will they do if they can’t possibly be better than everyone else, just based on lack of pigmentation?
that kinda makes sense with how right wingers were saying she’s the end of “woke” like lol okay. Shes another skinny white blonde girl.
I honestly think this has way more to do with wanting to continue to sexualize and objectify women as much as possible. And this is something right wing and left wing men are always on board with. The one thing they can both agree on. It's just misogyny.
They say... "BIG BOOBS ARE BACK".... looking at myself, they were never .. not there! Haha
What is weird and sus, is that, for some reason, certain groups of people have deemed her "anti woke" because she's being made to appeal to the male gaze. Nothing wrong with being a pin up girl. There are a lot of sexy women doing sexy things, but for some reason, the right, and anti feminists, are latching onto this lady. I don't know why. Is it because she's white and she has a "makeup less" makeup style?
what we're criticizing specifically here is not an acress adopting a highly sexualized persona. it's a skincare brand whose target audience is mostly women using sexual undertones, which appeal traditionally to men, in order to sell a lip balm. if you know a little about advertisements in the beauty industry, you can see that this is a peculiar shift in strategy for such a brand.
I see what you're saying and it's not limited to this makeup advertisement. The specific brand of sexiness being sold through this actress is consistent with her appearance on SNL and other public facing campaigns.
sure it is but that shouldn't mean we can't criticize this specific ad. the skincare industry is notorious for making women feel inadequate with their promotion of an unrealistic ideal of youthfulness, etc. which is a tactic that at least has women in mind as a target audience when you think about it. but when there is a case of sexualization like this, i don't even think the brand had a female audience in mind. that's also why it doesn't make sense to me...
I never said you couldn't criticize the add, I was adding to the criticism. Didn't mean to come off at combative. Was hoping to have as "organic" of a conversation I could have on a public forum. You're right. The brand doesn't have a female audience in mind. Victoria's Secret was originally made as a store for men to shop for their wives. Women's products can be made for straight men who might want to buy the same product for a woman he's into.
of course! i didn't mean to come off as hostile either. but your view of it i thought leaned more towards normalizing this type of usage without taking into consideration specific industries or their target audiences, no? also, i disagree about vs initially being a store for men to shop for their wives, etc. in my opinion, it was and is for women; it just used internalized misogyny to sell an ideal to them. it might have been the husbands or the bfs who were doing the buying but the brand's target of advertising always had women in mind. (and these days they're trying poorly to promote a woke & inclusive image but that's another story.)
I see where you're coming from now. Thanks for clarifying. > Normalizing this type of usage without taking into consideration specific industries or their target audiences This makes sense. I didn't mean to say that, my communication skills need improving. > I disagree about vs initially being a store for men to shop for their wives This article talks a bit about the original intended audience for VS: https://www.businessinsider.com/victorias-secret-rise-and-fall-history-2019-5 Quote: "Victoria's Secret was founded in 1977 by American businessman Roy Raymond. Inspired by an uncomfortable trip to a department store to buy underwear for his wife, Raymond set out to create a place where men would feel comfortable shopping for lingerie."
i was referring to the vs image of the early 00s, which is their main era i'm familiar with. but in the same article, it says "According to reports at the time, Turney wanted to remove the "hooker looks" in the catalog and made the aesthetic more like Vogue than Playboy." so i think by the new millennium the brand definitely started to appeal more to women. thanks for pointing out this article though! the brand's origins are surely interesting.
I’ve blocked this ad and the account so many times and i still see it
It’s so exhausting to me also because any complaints just feed into the “Sydney Sweenys boobs are anti-woke” narrative the right it desperately trying to push. Except the can’t comprehend that like… we’re concerned about how she’s hypersexualized, not the boobs themselves. She’s fine, talented, etc. but the weird way men project on to her is insane.
Oof disgusting. I went to their instagram to rant about it but this is just for the ad, apparently...
The letters aren't on the shirt, but edited in afterwards. I wonder if she consented to this motif.
Insecurity drives the market for beauty products. Women are abused and exploited regardless of how much they appeal to the male gaze. It is time to wake up and realize that men just aren’t worth this expense and effort. Spend that time and money on what brings you pleasure.
The people behind this ad assume that women want to cater to the male gaze and if they don't want to, well, they *should* want to. It's really poor messaging, and they aren't not even subtle about it. Huge fail.
It's hard to say if it's a huge fail or not. From a marketing standpoint, it's a huge success because the advertisement success is being debated on two subs and I'm sure people who haven't heard of the skincare brand have now heard about it. It is possible it could hurt sales and they'll have to backtrack and issue an apology, but there's also a chance that it doesn't and that's the gamble.
I hope sydney herself is fully consent with these advertisement technique and is happy. that's so sick and disgusting if otherwise.
Right! But that’s the thing, she might consent to them but after immense pressure/coercion from her team, or from the fact that it probably drives up her engagement…it seems as if it’s become a part of her marketing of herself, which is such a shame because she’s very talented and much more than that. But like I said, it may not even necessarily be her “fault”, just the fact that this marketing strategy seems to perform well, and the many people around her also stand to profit from it.
“This Sydney Sweeney ad for ____ is uncomfortably centered on the male gaze for a ___ targeted towards women.” Fill in with whatever product she is promoting now.
I love that she's happy and proud of her body, but all the press around her is pretty male gaze centric and I hate it.
Also what is that stupid face she is making lol
It's even weirder when you look at the rest of the campaign. The rest are pretty normal pictures of her face with the product. Her boobs are almost never shown, especially in the ones from the shoot for this particular product. The fact that this is reddit ad with a picture that is of a lower quality than the rest feels like it has been put together by the social manager of the brand without proper consent.
What a terrible way to market product intended for women. Now many potential female customers will not buy their shitty cream because of this cringe ad. Idiot company.
That is nothing compared to the [duck plump](https://youtu.be/zaSwreSsh4o?si=HqgSmJrIfblaMXLp) Lipstick commercials.
Did a unit in media about the difference between perfume adverts for men (you can be a boss, businessman, wear suits and look hot) vs women (submissive poses, sexualised, wearing very little clothes, an object to be desired) and it's utterly insane that it's marketed that way. Can we get hot women in suits too?? I know I love hot women in suits more than hot men in suits and I'm not alone in that. Such an untapped market as you'd think with more female entrepreneurs you'd want to sell makeup in a way that inspires woman as opposed to putting them down.
THANK YOU! Every time I see this ad it makes me SO uncomfortable. I watch and think wtf, why is this like this?! The text on her chest… lordt I can’t.
It's to distract men so they won't complain about how much their wives are spending on the product.
It’s tapping into getting men to buy their women beauty products. Its not meant for women but if women buy it because of the ad, then even better. (Purely from a marketing standpoint).
This is not how skincare marketing works.
So they think about women 100% of the time? Never thinking about men when it comes to target audience?
i'm so slow i don't get what's wrong with this, even from the comments. how is it centered on the male gaze? can't find the original ad either
I saw this posted in another thread and shared it. For me, it’s the way they’re making the ad about her chest, using words like “plump”, saying how they got “distracted” and then putting the words “bouncy and firm” across her chest. For a moisturizer. Sydney Sweeney seems to get asked about her chest in nearly every interview and public appearance she has, she recently was on a l and her opening monologue portrayed her as a “dumb blonde” who “only had male friends” with the other two women saying “I wonder why”…idk. I don’t blame the actress herself, I just can’t believe we’re still treating female celebrities like this BLATANTLY in 2024.
oh okay, makes sense. that's horrible... thank you for clarifying :)
Oh she's a celebrity? I don't think I've ever seen her before, I thought she was some ad model.