Madeline Holcombe, writing for CNN, is apparently reeling from “cultural whiplash” — her words — because American society is no longer perfectly aligned with the curated, utopian, feminist-flavored media buffet she’s been dining on for the past decade. That’s right: the resurgence of a conservative mood, the fall of Roe, and, heaven forbid, the reappearance of the male gaze — specifically in the form of Sydney Sweeney in jeans — has disrupted the ideological fantasyland she mistook for reality.
The male gaze is literally the instinct responsible for the continuation of our entire species you moron
Favoring ugly ambiguous forms of humanity isn’t “progress” pic.twitter.com/KvvJhl3yz4
— Melissa Chen (@MsMelChen) October 12, 2025
And now she’s upset. Deeply.
Holcombe laments that the shows she once loved for showcasing empowered, non-competitive, “girl’s girl” feminism have been eclipsed by gasp traditional cues: feminine beauty, sensuality, and commercial campaigns that don’t apologize for appealing to — brace yourself — men. Her central grievance? That Sydney Sweeney, in an ad campaign for American Eagle, looked attractive. That she was filmed in a way that might entice both men and women. That the ad didn’t check all the required boxes of performative feminism.
Let’s get real. The “male gaze,” as a concept, has long since morphed from academic critique into a blunt instrument used to bludgeon anything that doesn’t conform to gender-studies orthodoxy. It’s a catch-all term that feminists trot out whenever they feel threatened by the inconvenient fact that beauty — real, biologically resonant, sometimes overtly sexual beauty — still matters to most people. And that’s the actual grievance here: Sweeney didn’t do anything wrong. She just reminded people that women being beautiful, desirable, and traditionally feminine still moves the cultural needle more than an activist TikTok lecture.
What Holcombe and her cohort rarely admit is that the “male gaze” theory has always had a conveniently self-serving angle. It’s not about shielding women from objectification. It’s about controlling the narrative and punishing the competition. The theory doesn’t just indict how men look at women — it subtly rebukes women who allow themselves to be looked at. It takes the choices of women like Sweeney — who embrace femininity and market it — and reframes them as internalized oppression, not agency.
By “male gaze” they just mean some companies stopped trying to virtue signal by forcing hideous freaks into every ad campaign. pic.twitter.com/IvBlawuevh
— Flappr (@flapprdotnet) October 13, 2025
But the real comedy here is how quickly the entire framework collapses under its own contradictions. Holcombe celebrates “body positivity” — until someone like Sweeney shows up with a body that fits more traditional ideals. She celebrates empowerment — but not if it involves a woman profiting from her appearance in a way that appeals to men. She praises the “female gaze,” which somehow means women can be sexual without being objectified, but draws the line when women are too effective at doing just that.
What’s the limit? Apparently, it’s when jeans get sold.
And let’s not forget: American Eagle isn’t making experimental cinema. They’re selling clothes. If you want to move denim, you don’t hire a TikTok activist with 57 pronouns and a bullhorn. You hire Sydney Sweeney and point a camera in the right direction. That’s not patriarchy. That’s marketing. And it works.
