The Myth of Voyeuristic Virtue

On "admiring" femininity through sexual objectification

Photo by Mario Heller on Unsplash

In a recent podcast segment entitled, “I Too Admire Sydney Sweeney’s Breasts,” conservative cultural commentator

Andrew Klavan

said the following:

Everybody this week was talking about Sydney Sweeney’s appearance on Saturday Night Live, and most importantly about her breasts [because of her cleavage revealing outfits]. And I just want to say that I became aware of Sydney Sweeney’s breasts way back in 2021 when she took her shirt off in a film called The Voyeurs. And I don’t usually watch movies more than once, but I’ve watched that about fifteen times—although only about two minutes of it. Just an absolutely beautiful, beautiful woman.

Why would a professing Christian like Klavan make such objectifying remarks about a member of the opposite sex? One possible explanation is that he was attempting some kind of humorous hyperbole. After all, he has evidently stated elsewhere that “he married his wife because she was beautiful,” discovering ten years later that she was actually intelligent and rational as well. He later clarified that his statement was intended as a joke, in that he was merely “pointing out that men are attracted to beautiful women.”

So let’s make the charitable assumption that Klavan was only giving a pretense of gleeful voyeurism. What exactly was his point?

It’s Not Personal, It’s Politics

The apparent answer requires a bit of backstory. A few days prior, conservative author

Richard Hanania

had started the ball rolling by claiming that “Sydney Sweeney’s Boobs Are Anti-Woke.” In regards to cultural clothing styles, Hanania said that “leftists are committed to treating men and women the same.” He continued:

Most of them don’t go as far as […] to eliminate the categories of male and female clothing completely. Most women, even leftists, don’t want to look like men, but if they take feminism seriously enough, they are uncomfortable with looking too different, or making their sexuality too noticeable lest it signal that they are seeking the male gaze or distract from other traits they consider more valuable.

Hanania’s social media postings about Sweeney created a bandwagon that other conservatives jumped aboard—including, so it appears, Andrew Klavan. In Klavan’s own podcast, he followed his voyeuristic praise of Sydney Sweeney by decrying how the fantasy land of leftism leads certain industries in our culture to “try to convince us that what is really beautiful is girls who look like boys.” Instead, he said, “men…like to look at women who are shaped like women.”¹

Now, it is true that our culture has systematically attempted to erase many of the distinctions between men and women. The muddy waters of gender fluidity mask the true and beautiful nature of masculinity and femininity. What conservatives like Klavan are doing, however, is fighting these muddy waters with more mud, as if ogling over Sweeney’s immodesty is “somehow an affront to woke culture” in any meaningful or moral sense.

It’s Not Healthy, It’s Immoral

Klavan’s objectification of Sweeney is a far cry from merely appreciating the divinely-fashioned beauty of the human body. Generally speaking, men and women do find each other attractive, and there’s nothing wrong or shameful about that. That such attraction exists—and is acted upon in the proper contexts—is a gift from God (Jas. 1:17), to be received and enjoyed with thanksgiving (1 Tim. 4:4).

Some might argue that if men can’t appreciate the female form without prudes jumping down their throats, we might as well throw out the Song of Solomon. My short answer to that objection is that there’s a huge difference between a catcall and a canticle. But let’s flesh that answer out.

The Song of Solomon poetically explores the beauty of attraction between the sexes. For one, such attraction involves a holistic and relational interest, not a merely sexual one. This is evidenced by the man calling his love, “my sister, my bride” (Song 4:9; 4:10; 4:12; 5:1), and his love saying about him, “This is my beloved and this is my friend” (Song 5:16).

Second, the attraction expressed in the Song of Solomon goes both ways; it does not describe a man salivating over an uninterested woman. On the contrary, the woman shows a great deal of interest and initiative herself. The attraction is mutual (Song 1:2; 2:3; 5:16a; 7:10).

Third, the Song of Solomon points to the covenantal nature of the attraction between the lover and the beloved (Song 2:16; 6:3; 8:6). Both the man and woman in the poem recognize that sexual enjoyment should only be indulged at the proper time (Song 2:7; 3:5; 8:4) and in the proper context (Song 8:1).

Are any of these three factors at play in Klavan’s evaluation of Sweeney? Well, first, his delight is not in Sweeney as a whole person. Rather, he has reduced her to a pair of breasts (with a caveat he throws in that Sweeney is actually a good actress too).

Second, Sweeney (age 26) has shared no reciprocal attraction to Klavan (age 69). She may not even know he exists at all. And if she were to hear his lewd comments about her body, it’s doubtful that she would respond in kind.

Third, there is no committed relationship between Sweeney and Klavan. In fact, Sweeney is currently engaged to be married, and Klavan has actually been married to someone else—his wife Ellen—for over 40 years.

In Solomon-like language, Proverbs 5:19 goes so far as to explicitly instruct husbands to “let her [that is, your wife’s] breasts fill you at all times with delight.” Klavan gives at least the appearance of applying this command to the wrong person.²

It’s Not the Solution, It’s Another Problem

There is no moral equivalence between a husband reassuring his wife, “I love your body,” and a man telling the internet he loves the body of an actress 43 years his junior. The first statement is a tender expression of love. The second is a crass expression of lecherousness.

For Christians, jumping on the bandwagon of vulgar voyeurism requires rejecting Scriptural teaching in favor of owning the libs. Instead of seeking to “destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God” (2 Cor. 10:5), some appear to be choosing the path of “waging war according to the flesh” (2 Cor. 10:3), where lewdness and raunchiness are suddenly legitimate tools with which to fight the radical left.³

It is true that our society’s assault on sexual morals deserves opposition. However, we cannot defeat sexual lunacy with sexual lechery. That’s simply replacing one vice for another. And unlike in multiplication, two negatives do not become a positive.

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1. In support of his thesis, Klavan read excerpts from an article in The Spectator, in which columnist Bridget Phetasy pined for the days of “old school objectification” (i.e., the 1990s and early 2000s), when magazines like Maxim and Playboy featured ample-bosomed women. At one point she writes, “We were a culture awash in tits – and it was glorious.” (Klavan chose to quote from more sanitized sections of the article.)

2. The result, in Klavan’s case, is at least a projected (if not actual) violation of Matthew 5:28: “I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”

3. Another example of this unbiblical rhetoric is the “Conservative Dad’s Real Women of America” calendar, released in late 2023, and featuring scantily-clad conservatives. Some of these pin-up models are married women who profess Christ as their Lord. This calendar was marketed to conservatives—and conservative fathers, no less—under the pretense of “fighting woke extremist[s] to preserve real women,” as the calendar’s website (which I will not link to) describes it. We cannot, however, preserve genuine femininity through sexual objectification. Or, in the words of Not the Bee, “With conservatives like this, who needs liberals?”