Getting big boobs young sucks, actually

Why does it annoy people when celebrities discuss their body troubles?

Unsplash, Annie Spratt.

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“Euphoria” and “The White Lotus” actor Sydney Sweeney said one sentence an in interview for The Sun that The New York Post used in this tweet with these images, because the Post staff knew people would react exactly how they’re reacting:

New York Post @nypost

Sydney Sweeney: ‘I had boobs before other girls and I felt ostracized’ trib.al/Ly1ddyV

Of course losers in the comments replied things like: “Ostracized?? By who? I’m sure she was quite popular with the boys in her school,” “They’re the only reason she has a successful career,” “Am I supposed to feel sorry for you?”

You don’t need me to explain that being “popular with the boys” — which here means “being sexually objectified as a literal child whose body was changing in mysterious and often shocking ways” — is not the carefree romp people with brain worms imagine it is.

You don’t need me to explain that if you’re a girl who suddenly has C-cups in fourth grade, it’s not just the boys you’re “popular” with, it’s adult men. These men might terrify you and make you feel dirty when they stare too long in the grocery store. They might be drunk on vacation, crack a joke about how much your boobs bounce on the boat, and 22 years later you still can’t shake the embarrassment. They might be a middle-school teacher who encourages you to try on one of the new concert band T-shirts in the privacy of his office with him, and 22 years later you’re still grateful you had whatever it took to shakily say no and run out.

If you’re such a girl, of course who you are ostracized by is other girls. Like you, they’re just beginning to recognize the social currency of being popular with the boys. They’re learning that they should resent you because you were bestowed the boys’ attention first — but you didn’t ask for it, don’t understand it, don’t want it yet — so they call you a slut once they learn how bad it is to be that (before you’ve ever even kissed a boy, naturally) or say things like you only have boobs because you’re fat (they’re also learning how bad it is to be that). And so your find yourself mortified by your own adolescent body and hopelessly confused because it’s apparently desirable and shameful in equal measure.

Experiences like these are wildly common; there are also comments under the Post’s tweet from women saying they’d gone through similar humiliations when they developed breasts very young. But often when celebrity women whose bodies and faces hover at the top of the hierarchy of social acceptability and desirability speak about ever having had difficulties with those bodies and faces, people are annoyed, suspicious, or angry. It’s obvious why:

Magdalene J. Taylor @magdajtaylor

Sydney Sweeney is never afforded a good faith interpretation of what she says, it’s always blown up, taken out of context and criticized. And yes, it is because she is beautiful and big breasted!

New York Post @nypost

Sydney Sweeney: ‘I had boobs before other girls and I felt ostracized’ https://t.co/ztTv0wRyVW https://t.co/EDRnpOOY0o

We know that to be an exceptionally beautiful woman is a prized and precious thing, and Sydney’s beauty is among the factors that have led to her fame and wealth — People cannot believe she dare speak ill of it! Doesn’t she know how lucky she is, they want to know! The plebes are playing the world’s tiniest violins for Sydney, they proclaim!

People are willfully misunderstanding two things here. One: Sydney isn’t talking about how terrible it is to have large boobs now, she’s talking about the relatable body horror and alienation of early puberty — a thing that happened when she was a child. Two: Many people seem to think Sydney is humblebragging or complaining, when what she’s doing is simply saying something honest, and they don’t like the implications of her honesty.

As Emma Garland wrote about celebrities, “[A] false sense of intimacy has led to an over-reliance on them to embody our values, opinions and visions of integrity … and when they don’t we spend a week dragging them to hell.”

That’s why people are pissed at Sydney for daring to say that her body has ever caused her any trouble: They want her to embody humility, gratitude, an alluring insouciance about her genetic gifts (or to just shut up) because they do not believe she could ever have anything to say about her body that’s relatable to “real” humans. This is of course because to so many people a beautiful celebrity woman is not a human, she is an object. That is the reality Sydney is gesturing to in her statement and the very thing that shitheads in the tweet comments are proving true once again.

People are OK with some celebrities in some contexts being honest about their real-humanness — remember the era of certain celebrity women tripping and falling all the time, talking about farting and burping, and posting about ordering takeout and watching reality TV just like us? Read Emma’s piece up there — because they can buy, of course, that celebrities really do fall, fart, and watch Bravo. Some people, though, are unwilling or unable to buy that a beautiful celebrity woman has ever experienced anything but joy, respect, and admiration when it comes to her looks and body.

But of course she has. Ultimately I think people are subconsciously offended by the truth at the heart of Sydney’s statement: No matter what you look like, your body image will suffer at the hands of others.

I don’t find this offensive. I find it painfully true.