Liberation, or Just Good Marketing?

“There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.” — Oscar Wilde

If you are enraged by Sweeney and Bonnie Blue’s latest controversy, congratulations! You are the latest victim of capitalistic fascism. While this article is only going to talk about the obvious flipsides of the entire controversy—the devaluation of women’s rights vs the idea of personal freedom—it is important to remember that in a society as complex and convoluted as ours, the debate is not just limited to or shaped by these factors exclusively.

American Eagle recently launched an advertising campaign starring Euphoria star Sydney Sweeney clad in form-fitting denim. “Sydney Sweeney has great jeans,” they said.

Unfortunately, what their marketing team may have thought was clever wordplay soon took a 360-degree U-turn in the worst way possible when critics exploded on social media. They made the association of “genes” with eugenics, given her obvious appeal to the standard white, heteronormative beauty ideal. The blue eyes, blonde hair, and outdated hyper-sexualisation were an added bonus.

Just weeks later, Bonnie Blue—an OnlyFans creator—managed to popularise herself among her obvious target audience with her appearance on a Channel 4 documentary titled 1000 Men and Me. She chronicled her endeavour to engage in a high-profile extreme sex stunt involving over 1000 men which, although technically legal, caused outrage across British media.

She only made it worse for herself by announcing an even more controversial meet-and-greet “petting zoo” experiment inspired by performance artist David Blaine’s glass box stunt. Only this one had nothing to do with testing the limits of human behaviour when their actions have no consequences. Her commitment to break her record by doubling it has officially been squashed as OnlyFans bans the adult creator from their platform.

So now that we have some context, let’s unpack what this means for us as a society. Social media discourse amidst our perpetually shifting cultural norms is one thing—but let’s address the irony for a moment.

We as a society have given two women who are literally known for playing into the role of the “dumb blonde” perfectly the power to be seen as detrimental to the feminist revolution. Like it isn’t the same society that funds these ideologies. Not to mention the fact that despite the chaos, polls suggest a shocking reality—only 12% of Americans actually find the ad offensive while 39% found it clever and 40% stated it was neither.

Prominent right-wing figures such as Trump, Vance, and Megyn Kelly praised the campaign, framing backlash by the liberal left as an overreach. American Eagle’s stock has jumped approximately 23% because, guess what? Controversy in this day and age means commercial success.

Here comes the hypocrisy of the situation: we are all about “women empowerment” and giving women the agency to make choices and decisions for themselves—until it offends our personal belief system.

If you trace the history of denim, it was a uniform for the African American working class to distinguish them from the supremacist upper-class whites. It is an exemplary example of the role fashion plays in revolutionising society as they reclaimed their denim—a testament to their resilience.

So one can see how deeply offensive this campaign could be through the lens of history. And we must also ask: would this ad be perceived any differently if it were to star a Black model? Would it then be seen as a reinforcement of cultural stereotypes sexualising Black women?

But what if American Eagle made a completely chaste ad campaign with no “clever” or “problematic” wordplay? How would the media perceive it then? The simple answer is: it wouldn’t sell. And ultimately at the end of the day, that is what really matters.

Although the actress has not addressed the backlash directly, she has expressed her frustration, claiming “women empowerment” is a performative rhetoric that never actually translates into concrete action. Women in power in the industry can be “more cruel than men can ever be.” The industry pits attractive women against older female producers who view the former as a “threat.”

Ultimately, we fail to realise that whether her statements come from a place of internalised misogyny, the “luxury of obliviousness due to pretty privilege,” or genuine anecdote, these ad campaigns, PR stunts, and media propaganda operate within a male-dominated industry—produced for the men, by the men.

Simply put, even if it was her personal choice to be confident about her body and flaunt it, we perceive it as the biggest threat to feminism ever because of our own implicit biases. We are socialised to believe that being confident in your own skin—or showing skin—is shameful, and no one will ever take us seriously if we continue to do so.

There are a lot more sexually provocative ad campaigns starring men that have not sparked such virality, simply because the scope of sexual objectification has never applied to men the same way it has to women.

Bonnie Blue’s case, on the contrary, is much less forgiving. Critics call her the epitome of “moral decay” and “fatherless behaviour.” More importantly, her alleged predatory behaviour has been highlighted by her own statements, expressing her enthusiasm to target high school and university students—or “barely legal men”—to film sexual content.

The circumstantial double standards have been highlighted as critics argue that if this were a 25-year-old man, there would be no hesitation to regard Bonnie’s actions as predatory. She has also admitted to being an accomplice to infidelity, framing it as an act of compassion—publicly blaming the spouses of these married men for failing to satisfy their husbands. These comments led to her being labelled misogynistic, as critics point out how far such statements go in promoting the objectification of women.

A commentator questioned if her ethically questionable actions are the product of a “certain strand of feminism,” calling her a type of Frankenstein’s monster—hyper-individualistic with a sex-positive ethos untethered from collective ethical critique. That suggests two things:

1. The commentator is probably a man unsettled by a woman making a successful career out of enjoying her sexuality, contradicting patriarchal conditioning.

2. Her pursuit of personal sexual agency is paradoxically normalising content that degrades and dehumanises women, given her own misogynistic, not-so-girl’s-girl comments.

Journalist Brit Dawson also remarks that Bonnie Blue, originally named Tia Billinger, left her respectable finance job for the sex industry, challenging the usual portrayal of sex workers as victims forced into the trade. Instead, Blue presents herself as an autonomous worker. So is that empowering, or misleading?

And yet, we disparage “intimacy influencers” in the name of ethics and moral codes, while saying nothing about the men queuing up to participate in their stunts. The demand is what sustains their supply, and Bonnie Blue’s financial success speaks for itself.

Russell’s work on Sexual Ethics states that sex is viewed irrationally, shrouded in a “mist of mythology” where reason has yet to dispel traditional views. He even suggests that women’s equality would necessitate a relaxation of the traditional code regarding sexual behaviour. In that case, Bonnie Blue’s actions can be seen as a manifestation of this relaxation.

Ultimately, these cases underscore that sexual morality and feminist discourse are not static. Society is constantly evolving, renegotiating, and redefining our understanding of individual agency, liberation, and women empowerment—intertwined with capitalism and patriarchal ideologies in implicit ways we rarely notice until we stop to examine them.

---