THEY ARE TRANSVESTIGATING SYDNEY SWEENEY AND I GENUINELY CANNOT STOP LAUGHING
A love letter to the most spectacular own goal in internet history
Right, gather round, because the far right has done it again and I am absolutely beside myself with the sheer poetic beauty of it all.
Sydney Sweeney, blonde bombshell, registered Republican, the woman whose American Eagle advert had Donald Trump practically weeping into his golf shoes calling her “the HOTTEST,” has been transvestigated. That’s right. The MAGA pin-up, the conservative internet’s golden girl, the woman they were practically building a shrine to six months ago, has been declared secretly transgender by the very same crowd who were simping over her like she personally handed them their personality.
Let me explain transvestigation for the uninitiated, because this rabbit hole goes deep and it smells absolutely foul. Since around 2017, there have been online communities, actual real human beings with presumably functioning brains, who are convinced that countless celebrities are secretly trans, part of some Satanic inversion agenda, secretly worshipping Baphomet and having gender affirming surgeries in the dark. They use pseudoscientific nonsense like phrenology, yes, the same discredited racist garbage that Victorian colonisers used to justify atrocities, to “prove” their theories. Neck width. Clavicle structure. Hip ratios. You know, science.
THE NECK THAT BROKE THE MAGA CAMEL’S BACK
The specific culprit this time was an X post from a user called p8stie, who you might recognise as part of the legendary “TradCath E-Girl Summit” meme, and whose scientific analysis boiled down to: “Why is Sydney Sweeney’s neck so much wider than her head? I’m starting to get really worried that she’s actually a man.” This post was viewed over 5.5 million times. Five and a half million people clicked on a post about a woman’s neck. We are so back, everyone.
Here is the part that made me actually howl. Sydney Sweeney gained 30 pounds to play real life boxer Christy Martin in a biopic. She physically trained as a boxer. Her body changed because she was doing her job brilliantly. But sure. Transvestigation. That tracks.
The Facebook group “Transvestigation Disclosure NOW 2.0,” and I do love that it has a sequel, has apparently been posting about Sweeney since at least 2024, citing her “narrow hips” and clavicle structure as evidence. Her hips are too narrow. Her neck is too wide. There is genuinely no configuration of the female body that will satisfy these people, which, and I cannot stress this enough, is the entire point. There is no passing grade. There never was.
THE IRONY IS DOING HEAVY LIFTING TODAY
Let us take a moment to fully appreciate what has happened here. This is a woman Donald Trump personally championed. A woman whose politics were considered so acceptable to the right that conservatives were defending her honour online like medieval knights. A woman who, when asked about Trump’s praise, called it “surreal” rather than, say, horrifying, which tells you something. She had to clarify in a People interview in December that she does not actually support the views of people connected to her campaign, and even then, some people were not convinced.
And yet. AND YET. The transvestigators got her anyway. Because that is the thing about this particular flavour of conspiracy theory. It is not actually about trans people. It is about using transness as the ultimate insult, the thing so monstrous that even the most conventionally attractive, most politically adjacent woman can be destroyed by the accusation. They are not trying to protect trans people. They are weaponising our existence as a slur. They always were.
The kicker, the absolute cherry on top of this spectacular cake, is what happened in France. Ten people were found guilty of cyberbullying French First Lady Brigitte Macron over transvestigation rumours that she is secretly trans. Candace Owens, who heavily promoted those rumours, is currently facing a separate defamation suit from the Macrons in a Delaware court. The conspiracy theory is eating itself alive in courtrooms on both sides of the Atlantic and I find that deeply, spiritually satisfying.
WHAT THIS ACTUALLY TELLS US
Here is what I want you to take from this, beyond the obvious schadenfreude, which we are absolutely entitled to enjoy. Transvestigation is not a fringe curiosity. It is a window into exactly how the right views trans people and, more broadly, how it views women. Our bodies are evidence to be analysed. Our proportions are data points. Whether we are cisgender or transgender, we are subject to the same dehumanising scrutiny, the same pseudoscientific dissection, the same fundamental refusal to accept that a woman’s body belongs only to herself.
They called one of their own a trans woman because her neck looked funny after she gained weight for a role. That is the logic. That is the movement. That is what they are building when they pass laws and write manifestos and scream about protecting women. A world where no woman’s body is ever correct enough to escape examination.
As for me, a trans woman who has had my own existence picked apart and debated by strangers on the internet? Watching the machine turn on one of its favourites is not something I will pretend to feel bad about. I do not wish Sydney Sweeney harm. But I will absolutely note, with considerable satisfaction, that the people who made my life harder are now eating each other alive over a woman’s neck circumference.
The phrenology is coming from inside the house, darling.
Choose wisely.