Why has Sydney Sweeney become the most divisive woman in Hollywood?
L:ondon Evening Standard
The tug of war yielded no clear winners and only one clear loser: Sydney Sweeney. Or had she really lost? She was still at the centre of the conversation, after all. This isn’t the only time Sweeney has unwittingly become the centre of a political storm. The actress was lambasted by the Left last year after she attended a birthday party for her mother where guests were pictured in Make America Great Again-styled caps. This, combined with her “All American” good looks, made her a pretty little pin-up for Right-wing Americans. And while Sweeney did hit out at “assumptions” that were made about her political stance after the pictures received a backlash, she stayed conspicuously clear of disclosing her own politics.
“It’s absolutely a tactic,” says celebrity PR expert Mark Borkowski, “because as soon as you disclose that in the age of culture wars, you are cannon fodder.”
Borkowski and Gamble both compare this apolitical side of Sweeney to Taylor Swift, who famously took a long time to disclose her political stance around the 2016 election, despite incessant pleas from her fans to denounce Donald Trump. At the time, PRs and critics claimed it was due to Swift wanting to capitalise on her fandom being split between both camps, and not wanting to lose half her audience.