“Busty blondes” are apparently back, thanks to
Actor Sydney Sweeney. Sweeney’s rise to household name status has been steadily growing for a few years now. She earned two Emmy nominations for her roles in Euphoria and The White Lotus , and then took on the lead role in Anyone But You last year, a film loosely based on Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare, pitched as a “raunchy romcom”. At 26, she’s pretty much reaching superstardom already. But it’s not her acting accolades that seem to always make the headlines. Instead, much of the focus around Sweeney’s existence, even, seems to be centered around her body and appearance – namely her breasts. Ever since she hit screens in Euphoria , she has been over-sexualised, even commenting on it herself in an interview, saying, “I’m very proud of my work in Euphoria . I thought it was a great performance. But no one talks about it because I got naked.” Whether big boobs are now back being celebrated, the reality of navigating life with them is not easy. One minute you’re heralded as having the dream body, boobs that other
Women would “kill for” and that men would “dream to have in a woman” and the next minute you’re too much. I know this because I, too, once was The One With The Boobs. At age 13, they seemed to appear overnight , and a trip to M&S with my mum told me that they were a 32D. They only continued to grow and at 18, I was carrying around a 32G chest on a size 10 frame. In theory, this is the conventionally attractive type of body that Western women have been told to aspire to. But in reality, navigating life as The One With The Boobs made me miserable – both physically and emotionally. Practically speaking, in order to successfully carry around that heavy burden, structurally sound bras become your lifeline – all of which are very unfun, very unsexy and very expensive, leaving grooves in your shoulders and pain underneath your breasts. And if that wasn’t enough weight to be exhausted by, there’s also the weight of people’s unsolicited thoughts, comments and opinions to carry, too. For me, wearing any relatively low or tight top that showed even a tiny amount of cleavage would either prompt stares and intrusive, objectifying comments from boys and men, or dismissive, appalled comments from girls and women about being “on show”, “too inappropriate”, or “ready to give men a heart attack.” Once, when I was in my early twenties, I was running to catch a train at Clapham Junction station and a man jumped into my way, nearly knocking me over, to shout “Nice tits!” as his
Friends all laughed. A guy I was in sixth form with once replied to an
Instagram story of me on holiday in
New Zealand simply stating, “Jugs”. I have countless more examples of this. Friends with smaller chests would wear the same top and appear to get less criticism, and I never understood why – my boobs were just bigger, why was it so different? It’s only in the last few years that I’ve realised that the message I actually ended up getting wasn’t that my clothes were “inappropriate” – it was that my body was. And so, with shame on one side and objectification on another, I began to cover up my body. It’s hard to feel confident in your own skin or proud of who you are to start with, then only to find that when you do embrace it, men feel entitled to sexualise and objectify you. Every morning, clothing decisions had to be strategic. “If I’m wearing this top, it needs to be with this minimiser bra so that they don’t look too big.” I’d wear oversized clothes, which made me feel less attractive. I would sit and stand with my shoulders hunched forward, pressing down on my boobs to make them shrink. I didn’t exercise, because I felt like I looked ridiculous, would have to wear two sports bras and even then, would still attract comments and stares. When friends would talk about the joy of taking a bra off at the end of the day, I’d just stare blankly at them. The only time I’d ever be without my bra was in the shower. Strappy vests, backless dresses and non-underwired bikinis were, as far as my boobs and I were concerned, things that only dreams were made of. Eventually in 2022, after 15 years of back pain, unforgiving underwired bras, unwanted comments and spending far too much of my time and energy feeling self-conscious, negative and ashamed of my body (and ultimately, making myself miserable), I booked a consultation for a breast reduction . I was 27, just a year older than Sydney Sweeney is now. Within 10 minutes of my appointment, I’d never been so sure of a decision. The breast reduction cost £8,000 of my savings, but is the best money I have ever spent. And I cannot understate how life changing the surgery was – and still is. Read Next My boobs have started to sag - and it's taught me a lot The negativity and criticism I once subjected my body to every morning has now disappeared. Now that there’s less of me, I feel like I can bring more of me to every day. I hunch less, stand up straight and I can now walk past mirrors and shop windows without immediately searching for my reflection to see how big “they” look. I spend less money on bras, worry less about what to wear to weddings and I can even go without a bra. And I can enjoy my life a little more free from the unwanted attention, objectification and entitlement to my body from men. My only regret is that I didn’t have my breast reduction sooner, so that I could’ve spent more of my twenties feeling happier in my own skin. I feel so sad now to think about how ashamed of my body I was, and how that shame was actually caused by other people’s projections, comments and actions. But as a woman, you’re taught to be responsible for everyone else’s attitudes towards your body, aren’t you? Women are simultaneously shamed and sexualised for their bodies, enduring misogynistic views of attractiveness and femininity that just gets in the way of us living our lives and bringing who we are, not just how we happen to look, to our days. We deserve better, and Sydney Sweeney does too. Emily Ash Powell is a Welsh writer. You can find more of her writing on her substack