Sydney Sweeney arrived at her Cosmopolitan shoot armed with lingerie and conviction: She was ready to pose nearly naked in SYRN, her new line of intimate apparel, exposing both her Hollywood-idealized body and her business acumen. In any other year, with any other star, it’d be par for the celebrity course. In 2026, with Sydney Sweeney, it’s a Rorschach test.
If you ask her, which we did, the images you’re looking at are about control. She’s creating a moment she can own in something she designed, asserting with lace what she hasn’t yet with language.
“This can be how I communicate to my audience,” she explains. “I want to show women that we can take back our power and fully free ourselves.”
But when a body becomes a message, it’s often others deciding what it means. Putting something like this out there right now, into a fractured digital landscape eager to spar with itself, is a provocative proposition—especially for Sydney, who spent 2025 becoming arguably the most polarizing star in America.1
Still, she says, she needs people to see her in her lingerie and understand this: “I want SYRN to stand for the power of choice.”
1. This isn’t the first time a controversial figure has appeared on a Cosmopolitan cover. See our profiles of Pamela Anderson (1998), Kim Kardashian (2013), and Iggy Azalea (2019), among others.
It’s Sydney’s choice to lay herself bare, and it’s your choice whether or not to buy it. Until recently, her image was featured in lighter cultural conversations. Sydney was best known for breakout television performances on HBO, playing opposite ends of the same spectrum as The White Lotus’s Olivia, a hyper-verbal avatar of Gen Z moral certainty who wields cutting language as power, and Euphoria’s Cassie,2 a character so desperate to be loved, she communicates almost entirely through her body, imploding in the process. Sydney was also credited with helping revive the modern rom-com alongside Glen Powell, who praised her marketing genius after they leaned into dating rumors offscreen (before denying them). Their movie Anyone But You, which Sydney also executive produced, grossed $220 million worldwide.
Then July’s American Eagle3 jeans campaign (tagline: “Sydney Sweeney has great jeans”) ricocheted across the internet. It was condemned by critics as eugenics rhetoric and publicly applauded by the U.S. president.4 As American Eagle’s stock rose 74 percent, a social media sleuth dug up voting records confirming Sydney’s registration as a Florida Republican, and Sydney’s feeds were inundated with calls for accountability.
2. “She leads with her heart, and she leaves her brain behind,” Sydney says of the character that she’ll reprise for season 3 in April. “But I appreciate how much of herself she gives to other people. From Cassie, I’ve learned that sometimes you can’t love other people until you love yourself first.”
3. As of January 2026, Sydney was still posting new American Eagle images as a paid partner.
4. His post reads in part, “Sidney Sweeney, a registered Republican, has the HOTTEST ad out there. It’s for American Eagle, and the jeans are ‘flying off the shelves.’ Go get ’em Sidney.”
Yet the Sydney Sweeney machine kept moving. Her thriller The Housemaid recouped its entire $35 million budget in days and secured a sequel. She continued promoting5 her box office triumphs (The Housemaid) and tribulations (Christy)6 alike while articles like “Sydney Sweeney Was a Star on the Rise. What Happened?” flooded the internet and her image became increasingly linked to MAGA7 despite her never once endorsing it.
5. Her feeds were also full of lucrative sponsored content for brands like Jimmy Choo, Miu Miu, Kérastase, and Samsung. And there was the Dr. Squatch bar soap infused with her bathwater that was listed on eBay for $2,500.
6. Christy infamously failed to woo moviegoers, setting a new box office record for worst drop in a second weekend.
7. What this looks like in practice: Official government White House social accounts posting “Have you seen the Sydney Sweeney ad?”, Ted Cruz and JD Vance invoking her name, FOX News mentioning her 766 times in one week, headlines like “Yes, Sydney Sweeney’s Boobs Are Anti-Woke,” and waves of Instagram comments calling her “America’s princess” and “MAGA Barbie.” Rolling Stone even published “A Complete Timeline of the Right Claiming Sydney Sweeney.”
Her brand bisected: To some, she was a Hollywood hero, a crusader against “woke” outrage and overreach. To others, she stood for a system that rewards silence from those least harmed by it. Was her choosing not to comment a principled refusal to perform politics or a cosign? Was she declining to play the outrage game or had she mastered it? And what did she actually think of the politics being projected onto her face, politics that strip rights from people who do not look like her?
No one really knew, and in the absence of something more concrete to glom on to, people looked at Sydney and filled in the blanks themselves, her December statement against divisiveness8 largely dismissed by the internet as too little clarity, too late.
8. “Anyone who knows me knows that I’m always trying to bring people together. I’m against hate and divisiveness,” Sydney said in a statement to People. “In the past my stance has been to never respond to negative or positive press but recently I have come to realize that my silence regarding this issue has only widened the divide, not closed it. So I hope this new year brings more focus on what connects us instead of what divides us.”
In speaking to her now, it’s clear Sydney understands that the internet hungers for neat sound bites to chew on—an endorsement, a disavowal, an ideological line drawn in ink. It is her choice, she says directly, not to feed this craving with words.
“Those aren’t my values,” she says of 2025’s controversy, “but I feel like I’ve never needed to correct people who don’t know who I am.”
So who is she? She realizes her choices widen the chasm between Syd the person, a delightfully charming, self-professed hopeless romantic and real human being who has to scroll past reams of hate anytime she sends memes to her dad, and Sydney Sweeney the political prism, who, she explains, is being used as a pawn. She knows everything she says—including here—will be picked apart.
She’s right, too. These lingerie photos represent another loaded moment. And while it’s always been true that an image is never just an image, photos like these carry their own weight in a country where fans’ projections can make or break someone’s ascension, where intention doesn’t always make it to everyone’s For You Page, and where women’s bodies and basic bodily autonomy are regularly debated online and off. (On the topic of abortion specifically, Sydney, for the record, believes “a woman has the right to decide.”9)
A single image can feel like a provocation, a mirror, a dog whistle, an aspiration, or a manifesto, depending on who is looking. Sydney wants to show you her lingerie, her work, her vision for a new venture, and, yes, her body. But what do you see when you look at her? That question is at the center of everything.
9. Her full quote to Flaunt Magazine in 2021: “I don’t like getting into political topics, but I do believe that a woman has the right to be able to decide over her body.”
“Sydney Sweeney debuts a lingerie line” could sound like pouring gasoline on a fire. Lingerie, as an industry, has a history of being made by men for women and marketed to both. With SYRN, whose gaze are you prioritizing?
People will say, “Oh, she’s doing this for guys” or “Oh, she’s a guy’s girl.” But I’m like, “What is more girl’s girl than owning your body and doing it for yourself?” I want it to be their choice—the choice of the wearer—whether this is for them, for somebody else, or for a camera lens.
Even so, there are different pressures and expectations placed on different women’s bodies—I’m thinking specifically of women of color—that cis white women don’t always experience. How did you take this into account?
My designers are all women, and I have an amazing diverse team. My models are a beautiful range of body types. I’m always like, “I want to see it on every body.” I can’t be the only model. I need to make sure everyone feels really good in it.
What were your other nonnegotiables when crafting SYRN?
If I wouldn’t wear it, I wouldn’t want to make it. In sixth grade, I was a 32 DD, and I remember going to the store to get my first wire bra. It was silk and the only bra I felt good in. I literally wore it to the point that it had holes in it. I brought it into my SYRN office and was like, “This is how much this bra has meant to me.” It has stood by my side my entire life. I want to make bras that stay with women. And it’s really difficult finding things that support you but don’t ride up your back. I got slammed for what I wore in Anyone But You.
I remember that bikini.10
Everyone was dragging me and I’m like, “Guys. When you have boobs that are heavy and not fake, if your top doesn’t fit perfectly, it’s going to ride up.”
Not you having to explain how boobs work.
I feel like I’ve had to explain how boobs work for forever now. I’ve dealt with this my entire life. I don’t ever want a girl to feel like I did after everyone came at me for a ’fit I had no control over.
10. When set photos of Sydney first leaked, Reddit boards filled with comments about the fit of her bikini top, ranging from “Designers don’t know what to do with natural bigger breasts” to “Justice for Sydney’s boobs.”
How do you think being in the spotlight since you were a teenager has affected the way the public talks about your body?
I see photos comparing me to my child self all the time. I’m like, “I was 14 in that image. I’m 28 now. Of course I look different—I grew up.” I feel bad when I see accounts that are like, “Oh, she’s done X and Y to her face.” It’s not true. I’ve never gotten any work done. I wish there was something in place on social media to restrict things that aren’t true, because there are girls who will look at me and say, “I need to do these things to feel pretty.” It makes me sad.
Given this and what you’ve said in the past about being hypersexualized,11 was there a moment in the SYRN design process when making this line became about control?
Yeah, this is me reclaiming my body and my narrative and using it to empower other women.
11. “I’ve been dealing with [fans sexualizing me] since Euphoria, so I’m very used to it at this point,” Sydney said in an October 2025 interview on SiriusXM.
You’ve become a kind of lightning rod online in that people project their fantasies, their frustrations, and their politics onto you. When did you first realize there was Syd, the person, and Sydney Sweeney, the discourse topic?
Honestly, it started with Cassie. I play a lot of characters that make questionable decisions or where it’s complicated to like them. People project some of that onto me. But that was scratching the surface of what I’m dealing with now, with people creating their own narratives that serve their purposes, their headlines, their clickbait.
To that end, you’ve been at the center of a lot of culture war conversations without actually saying very much.
It’s definitely not a comfortable thing to have people saying what you believe or think, especially when that doesn’t align with you. It’s been a weird thing having to navigate and digest, because it’s not me. None of it is me. And I’m having to watch it happen. I’m online and I see things, but I’m slowly pulling myself away. It’s definitely gone to a level where it’s just not healthy for me to digest it all.
If you could ask the internet to retire one narrative about you forever, what would it be?
That I’m a hateful person.
There is a charged nickname that has stuck to you on social media: “MAGA Barbie.” I see it in Instagram comments constantly. How do you understand this label given that you’ve been private about your politics?
I’ve never been here to talk about politics. I’ve always been here to make art, so this is just not a conversation I want to be at the forefront of. And I think because of that, people want to take it even further and use me as their own pawn. But it’s somebody else assigning something to me, and I can’t control that.
Why not correct it if it’s not true? Where is the line for you?
I haven’t figured it out. I’m not a hateful person. If I say, “That’s not true,” they’ll come at me like, “You’re just saying that to look better.” There’s no winning. There’s never any winning. I just have to continue being who I am, because I know who I am. I can’t make everyone love me. I know what I stand for.
Is there anything about your values as a person, not party affiliations but values, that you wish people understood about you more clearly?
I’ve always led with love. I’ve always believed that love is love in every single form. You should be kind to whoever you meet. I remember on the set of Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood, I watched Brad Pitt sit and hang out with the transpo department. I absolutely loved that, and I was like, “Yeah, you have to respect everybody in your life.”
One thing that does seem like a clear line for you: You don’t speak to your fans directly about your political beliefs. You’re not the first celebrity to be called out for this—Taylor Swift famously grappled with how much of her personal politics to disclose before speaking out.12 Do you think you’d ever change your mind about doing the same? Is there a future in which people will get to see what you believe, politically?
No. I’m not a political person. I’m in the arts. I’m not here to speak on politics. That’s not an area I’ve ever even imagined getting into. It’s not why I became who I am. I became an actor because I like to tell stories, but I don’t believe in hate in any form. I believe we should all love each other and have respect and understanding for one another.
12. In Miss Americana, Taylor owned her hesitation to speak publicly about politics, reflecting on how pressure to be seen as a “nice” celebrity kept her silent. In the same documentary, she made the decision to start being vocal about her thoughts on policies and politicians. Her candor sparked intense backlash, with headlines reading “Taylor Swift: She Just Ended Her Career.”
There are a lot of theories about how you are actually a genius mastermind who understands the internet better than anyone gives you credit for, and you are using this understanding to succeed and build businesses. Does that feel true to you?
I think that they underestimate my strengths, but they overestimate how much control I have over a narrative.
Do you feel in any way emotionally connected to the Sydney that the internet debates, or do you experience her as a kind of distant, almost symbolic version?
It definitely affects me because people who don’t know me are putting words or assumptions on me that are blatantly not true. I’m still a human being. I think actions will always speak louder than words that are written, and everyone who knows me or has worked with me or has been my friend would all say the exact same thing: I’m a hard worker and I’m very kind. And so it is difficult when people have opinions about you that aren’t true, because you want them to know who you are. You want to correct them and be like, “I don’t believe in hate! I don’t stand for anything you guys are saying.”
Is it possible for anyone, even celebrities with publicity machines behind them, to fully control their image anymore, or is that an outdated premise with the way online discourse happens?
There are millions of people who have access to social media and can dictate a narrative about who you are. I’ve seen so many things that have gone viral that are so fabricated about me. People believe it, and there’s no correcting them. So I don’t think it’s possible, sadly.
Do you still run your own Instagram?13
I run everything. No one has access to any of my accounts.
13. Sydney has 25.8 million followers on Instagram alone, where nearly every photo she posts gets more than 1 million Likes.
We did an interview with Ariana Greenblatt where she talked about trying to have a burner account so she could scroll freely, but then the algorithm figured it out and started feeding her hate about herself—
All of my accounts involve scrolling through hate of me.14
Are there women in your industry who have given you advice on navigating this visibility?
I have some amazing women in my life. Julianne Moore, Amanda Seyfried, Sharon Stone, Maude Apatow, Jamie Lee Curtis. They’ve all really shown up for me in beautiful ways. They have been great rocks to lean on.
14. Sydney notes this hate appears alongside “ridiculous” memes, silicone Picky Pads pimple-popping vids, and hot girls: “Yeah, I’ve got a lot of hot girls. I’ll be looking for girls I want to send SYRN stuff to.”
You built this network without the safety net so many actors in Hollywood have. How has your path been different from those of your nepo baby peers?
I’ve never had a plan B. I never prepared to fail because I didn’t have any choice but to succeed. I’ve done projects with people who are born into the industry or had connections coming into it, and it’s very different seeing their process versus mine—which is not to say it’s less challenging; it’s just different.
My first project was not an award-winning film with an award-winning director. I did really shitty indies, I did short films, and I did guest star, costar, and extra work on TV shows. I did movies that I wish would just disappear.15 But I had to start somewhere. I had to add things to my résumé, and I had to meet people.
You seem quite intentional about the relationships in your work life. How do you show love more personally?
I’m a lover of love. I’ll randomly hand-make stuff for people on a random Tuesday, like, “Here’s a deck of cards I painted for you and each one represents a date of ours.” I always chew gum, and I’ll fold the wrappers into paper planes and write little love letters on each one. Oh my god, I’m so cheesy.
15. Early works Sydney may or may not be referring to include the mutant spider horror project Spiders 3D, her film debut in ZMD: Zombies of Mass Destruction, or the indie misfire Angels in Stardust, which was later immortalized in director William Robert Carey’s memoir, How Not to Make a Movie.
What does romantic love feel like for you?16
Like freedom. You know in The Princess Diaries when Anne Hathaway says that when she kisses the guy she knows she’s supposed to be with, her foot will flip up? That’s what love feels like. The lights will magically turn on. The birds will start flying. The fountains start shooting water. Love is a Disney movie.
16. Sydney repeatedly pushes back on various dating rumors during our conversation. “Sometimes I’ll think that I can do a normal thing and have a date in a normal way, and then it gets perceived in a very non-normal way,” she says. “It’s kind of sad.”
How do you decide whether to keep a romantic relationship private or go public?
I was in a relationship for a very long time,17 for seven and a half years, and I never talked about it. I was very private. No one would ever see us. I think it’s important to have some things for myself. I understand that I’m a public person, but I’m still in my 20s. I’m still figuring out love, and it’s hard to do that with millions of people who have their own opinions of what that looks like. At the same time, for all of my 20s, I put my head down and focused on work—and now I want to experience things. But it’s hard deciding that I want to experience love in the public eye. I’m just navigating it all.
17. Sydney dated Jonathan Davino for most of her 20s, getting engaged in 2022 before breaking up in spring 2025.
I did an interview once with Kiernan Shipka where we joked that every six months, when she stands within five feet of a man, there will be a headline about her dating him.
Oh, yeah, it’s really funny. I wake up and I find out I’m dating a different guy anytime I stand in a room where there’s a single man. I did a GQ video interview and one of the questions was, “Who is Sydney Sweeney dating?” And I was like, “I don’t know. You guys tell me.”
How do you meet people as a famous person?
I don’t know. After I had a few months of just crying my eyes out, I asked all my friends, “How do I do this?” I’ve never dated before. I’ve never even used a dating app. My friends who aren’t in the industry are like, “We’ll just go out and meet someone.” But I can’t just meet someone at a bar. It doesn’t work like that.
You’ve previously said you want a partner you can hang out with 24/7. Is that still the dream, or has space become sexier?
Oh, no, I struggle with being alone. My mom, my friends are all like, “Sydney, you need to learn to love to be alone.” I have a huge fear of being alone for the rest of my life, so I look for someone who will be my best friend, who I can hang out with, talk to all the time, dream up things with, and work with.
A lot of people point to your onscreen dynamic with Glen Powell as their ideal relationship. Do you have a favorite trope you seek in your own romantic life?
I wouldn’t ever be like, “Okay, this guy needs to do exactly what this character did or make me feel exactly how this character made me feel.” The other day, my mom and I were talking about guys, and I was like, “Well, he’s not really my type.” And she goes, “Well, maybe your type’s not working out for you, Syd.” Maybe I need to be open to other experiences and try not to put everything in this exact box of what I think I need.
How would you define your type?
Athletic and outgoing and funny. I’m a sporty girl, so someone needs to be able to climb a mountain with me, go skydiving with me. And someone who loves their family. I love myself a man…oh, wow, when you print that, you won’t hear the inflection in my voice.18 Look, I am a boss in my life. I take control. I go after what I want. I am confident, and I am successful, and I don’t actually need a man. I’ve got myself. I’ve got an incredible group of girlfriends. I’ve got a team of badass women. That is very intimidating to a lot of guys, so a guy needs to be able to stand in that with me. It takes a very specific person who can handle the world that comes with me. There was a guy who I really, really liked, but he told me he can’t handle my world. It’s a hard thing.
18. That inflection was playfully sarcastic.
What did that teach you?
Sometimes you don’t need a man. You just need a dog. Last spring, I was with my best friend, Jade, at the car shop where I built my Bronco. We were talking about guys and googling the most eligible bachelors,19 and of course, we were coming up short. There was nothing good. She was like, “Well, what are you looking for?” And I was like, “I just want a guy who is loyal, who loves me, who is playful, and who will cuddle.” And she goes, “Oh, so you want a dog?” And I was like, “I guess I do.” So we went on Craigslist, and I got myself a German shepherd. And now I have Sully, who is my forever boyfriend. So to the readers out there who are like, “Oh, man,” get yourself a dog.
19. Sydney pauses here to wonder: “This goes back to our conversation of how do you find a guy.…Is it googling?”
Title image: Dress Anna Sui, bra and underwear SYRN, ring Chopard. On the cover: Dress Hervé Léger, bra SYRN.
Hair by Kevin Ryan for Bumble and Bumble. Wigs by EasiHair Pro. Makeup by Pat McGrath. Nail art by Mei Kawajiri for Zillabeau. Set design by Jacob Burstein at MHS Artists. Bedding by Brooklinen. Shot on location at Untitled NYC.
(“The Breakdown” video) Director and senior producer: Lucy Dolan-Zalaznick. Supervising cinematographer: Derrick Woodard. Cinematographer: Alvah Holmes. Editors: Ana Fangayen and Sam Miller.
(Video loops) Director: Lucy Dolan-Zalaznick. Director of photography and editor: Ana Fangayen. Editor: Sam Miller.
