Selling Softcore
Sydney Sweeney is selling bathwater soap. Medium grit to be precise.
Depending who you ask this is either genius marketing for Sweeny and Dr. Squatch, a men’s soap brand that caters to bar for the balls, or you’re one of the many liberal SWERF and TERFs who want to punish buyers of porn to save the creators of porn providing footholds for conservatives to criminalize any displays of sexuality that is non cisgender, heterosexual, and procreative.
Many are legitimately disgusted by the fetish of it all, but to me it feels a bit of stolen valor to use hot girl bathwater as a “narrative element” when there are sex workers who are at risk of de-banking for actually selling worn panties. I love a fetish moment, so I’ll admit I find the soap funny, but everything about it is very sexless.
Being scandalized by kinks you do not possess is fine. No one is demanding you engage in piss play against your will. I find a lot of fetishes silly if not fascinating. And most are harmless when done safely. What place is it for me to judge the sexual genius of a hand crafted bondage fuck machine on wheels. Too many of you revel in the nordic model fantasy of stripping specifically men’s access to porn to free women from the yoke of patriarchy. Are you a useful idiot not realizing you are aiding the calls for legislation that outlaws sex workers and/or queer people from public life which will cause tremendous rippled damage to anyone who enjoys sex, not just your boyfriend and his secret alt twitter following porn models.
My favorite gripe that’s repeated is Sweeney is no longer a “girl’s girl.” Really now, a heterosexual woman is against the progress of women’s rights not because she is part of the celebrity class hoarding wealth or commingling with conservatives/zionists and their businesses, and now appropriating sex work which is all I can think of criticizing her for— she’s mostly uncontroversial and I kind of don’t care about her as a person. I’m more interested in critiquing the way her management sells her hot girl persona in a decaying empire and how it harms sex workers.
What so called feminists lament over is that Sweeney is engaging in fetish play for financial gain. The root of their disgust specifically originates with hatred of sex work and the whorephobia that fuels continued stigma and harm against us. They don’t care that it’s going to be just fine for Sydney Sweeney to pull this stunt while the rest of the fetish models and artisans are being digitally erased like in Sweden where Onlyfans models can no longer provide commissions or cam shows. This is the result of radical liberal feminism, the kind Kamala Harris implemented in FOSTA-SESTA which harms providers more often than it punishes the purchaser. To these feminists, sex workers are victims of capitalism
Part of the benefit of fansites is the ability to have a global audience of buyers. Creators both in and out of Sweden will suffer the financial consequences of losing access to customers even if the Nordic model allows them to produce with a promise of no legal punishment. But how do you punish buyers without increased surveillance of producers? What safety net is in place for producers who rely on criminalized clients to continue their work, and what exit strategy does this actually provide.
As mentioned above, a more sex work inclusive feminist analysis would target Sweeney for adopting the persona of sex worker for a check without engaging in our community. The cooption of sex worker aesthetics isn’t a relatively new phenomenon. Sweeney, like many other celebrities (and the brands they advertise for), can skirt the lines of playing with sex work without the repercussions of being a sex worker because of her race and class position. Even if she had worked in the sex industry previously she would likely still receive better treatment over former sex workers of color, but there are so many non sex working women of color in pop culture who face more public scrutiny over their sexuality simply because they are racialized, which makes them inherently traitorous to the pure white virginal ideal.
Sabrina Carpenter comes to mind as another celebrity guilty of modeling her pop persona on playboy bunnies of yore. Even though she has explicit sexual messaging in her songs I still find it difficult to see what about 3ply nylons and opaque bustiers that is scaring the 17 year olds. She’s so fucking horny, but her expression of this in fashion is body suits… just body suits. Glittery bodysuits that probably chafe the armpit into the most tender hot girl wagyu.
There are so many independent lingerie designers that would die for a chance to have their work seen on a celebrity. Chappell Roan is always wearing some indie designer I already follow when she performs or attends awards. Sabrina collaborates with Skims. Oh Miss Kimberly… there’s another one with a complicated relationship to sex work, but I physically cannot absorb information about this woman. Anyway Skims is good at making shape wear and basics. The lingerie leaves much to be desired, very victoria’s secret for the cool girl clean tiktok aesthetic. Cool girl doesn’t go to disney world with her glitzed out Stanley tumbler. Cool girl does turmeric shots and key bumps in WeHo.
The lingerie just sucks now because everyone needs to consume new products every week and now Honey Birdette no longer sends me my bras in a box. That’s like the best part about being a dominatrix is OPENING THE BOX ON VIDEO FOR A SUBMISSIVE LOSER. Nothing is horny or even romantic if it can be bought en masse. The upside to this is I’ve started buying more lingerie from brands that require 6-8 week production, but this only works if they can compete with fast fashion which was already taking it’s toll on brands I loved before anyone had to relearn what a tariff is.
We are in a new era of the American Girl Next Door. She’s still blonde and thin-but-curvy in all the right places, but unlike the topless sex icons of the 90s, she cannot be too frivolous with her sexuality because it would give off the suggestion she has an Onlyfans. Like shadows on the wall of Plato’s cave she still loves to fuck, maybe she kisses girls, but she is never fully naked never fully obscene. Men desire to satisfy their ego with a partner hot enough to be a sex worker without her actually being tainted by the full exposure of her pussy being fucked by another man’s cock. Women desire the sexual freedom and power over men without the stigma, but even these safe for marketing icons are still too horny for some. In the whittling of women’s autonomy by the right, the beauty standard of women they carve out will always cause the entirety of feminized people to suffer.
A known truth of social media marketing is the more chatter about a public figure or a brand pleases the algorithms regardless of whether this is praise or controversy. A non significant portion of Americans despise wanton displays of sexuality, in this instance a Beautiful Blonde Woman submerged to the collar bones in water, will bring out the engagement farming blue-checks on twitter which feeds it to the timelines of the feminist woke scolds and misogynists lamenting how far their Beautiful Blonde Woman has fallen from grace into filthy whoredom. They all cry “who would ever buy such a despicable thing!?” Love it or hate it, sex played right under repressive regimes still sells and this is still an essay about bathwater soap.
Sydney Sweeney is too beautiful to know how much her groceries cost. The assumption a woman that successful is flirting with sex work because she is down on her luck financially is one rooted in whorephobia. Only someone who lack morals and work ethic would sink so low to sell her bathwater is a sex worker you invent to be mad at when presented with women comfortable in their sexuality. It can’t be funny on purpose with a scent named, and I shit you not, MORNING WOOD. No, it must have some twisted ulterior motive that reflects on the degradation of American society.
Dr. Squatch is bold for taking such a risk, not because of the potential controversy but because the market for this product is sexually frustrated gen-z and millenial men who don’t shower. This is for men who watch streamers play video games in ten hour increments instead of building houses. They’re the exact types who love to dominate their other sexually frustrated friends with gag gifts only a lesser male, a degenerate unshowered gooner, would love. But secretly they long to wash their balls with the medium grit hot girl bathwater soap imagining it’s Sydney Sweeney’s hands caressing them instead of their own rough and chewed cuticles.
The fact is this is a VERY limited release with only 5,000 bars available for purchase at $8 doesn’t seem steep for business to clear. At the end of the day it’s still a useful inexpensive piece of soap and they’ll probably sell out quickly because it’s funny. If they do then I suggest the Tushy the bidet company collaborate with TUSHY the anal sex studio so men start washing their asses.
You can bitch all you want about the marketing making you feel yucky, it’s not actually made with hot girl bathwater, she probably was never naked in the bathtub. It’s fetish only in name alone. Be more concerned that the romanticization of the modern sex worker in media distills her sexuality to be consumer friendly while stripping the real sex workers of the bodily autonomy to pursue fetish play as a viable career.