Making of a Bombshell in 2025: Are we still celebrating the idea of dumb, hot, and complicated?

I’ve never ever been happier,” said Sydney Sweeney’s Cassie in season two of Euphoria (2022). It was a dramatic proclamation, her face flushed with tears and flashy makeup accentuating her misery. From the get-go, Cassie had become a sex symbol. She is able to pleasure herself and reach orgasm in public. She allows her boyfriends to film her during sex. She weaponises her conventionally gorgeous body—her breasts especially—to lure male attention.

Yet, there is nothing joyful, honourable, worthy or aspirational about her quest to seem like a willing sexual paramour to these seemingly terrible men. Her desperation erases any power she could have, solidifying her as a victim even in moments of presumed agency. You would not be privy to this if you haven’t watched the show. But in either case, you have been subjected to her stunning cleavage through the clips that circulate on Reels, or her sultry red carpet appearances where she evokes the bombshell legion. As if, long-form storytelling could have anything over images in our Insta-economy.

Who is a bombshell? It is a slang term, for one. Many writers are unlikely to slip that word into their arguments. She is a hypersexualised woman who is there for us to ogle. She could have interviews, nuanced roles, businesses that would have raked her millions that would make the obvious case of her being more than that. Yet, for the general public, men mostly, she is nothing but the sum of her two coveted parts: Breasts and buttocks.

Jean Harlow was the original bombshell. Marilyn Monroe is its most ubiquitous avatar. Pamela Anderson (before her sans-makeup era) and Anna Nicole Smith drove a frenzied conversation around breast enhancement surgeries in the 80s and 90s. The Kardashian-Jenner clan, reality television royalty, took this to a feverish extreme.

Sweeney makes a fascinating, if a frustrating case in this study. We have become obsessed with her body, her breasts specifically, which have had the power to launch op-eds into the world about how crudeness is in, and “wokeness” is dead. There is a but. Her prestige roles, whether as a spoiled and hypocritical college girl in HBO Max’s The White Lotus (2021-), or as a nun who is caught in the cobweb of mysterious and terrifying encounters in Immaculate (2024), render her as a competent actor—one who has flair for layered characters that are able to entail commentary. Even in an ensemble cast, as is the case with her HBO shows, which are star studded with the likes of Zendaya, Jacob Elordi, Connie Britton, and Jennifer Coolidge, she is able to stand out. Yes, a disproportionate amount of chatter becomes about her cleavage when she promotes these ventures, yet she has the ability to spur something undeniable: She is an Actor. You don’t lose sight of that, even as she launches a soap made out of her bathwater, called Sydney’s Bathwater Bliss (it’s sold out, FYI).

You don’t lose sight of that even as she laughs at her own expense, saying people think that she is an intelligent woman with big ti*s, when she is actually a stupid woman with big ti*s.

You don’t lose sight of that even when American Eagle produces a campaign with her with a suggestive tagline that says “Sydney Sweeney Has Great Jeans.”

Poor Kylie Jenner. She cannot catch a break. The youngest in the Kardashian-Jenner clan, founder of Kylie Cosmetics and Khy, and the most followed among her siblings on Instagram (393 million and counting), she inspires thorough disdain. (My empathy has limits too: She is, after all, a multimillionaire).

She has sent Timothée Chalamet fans into an existential crisis: Is it possible that their favourite actor with an alternative vibe, and who is headlining super mainstream films, is actually ‘basic’? Presumably he has a plethora of options, then why is he choosing someone who is a part of that reviled canon of bombshells? It is to be noted that anyone who has read a profile of Jenner on any platform knows that she is not at all the vindictive, vapid airhead that people posit her as.

Perhaps, the problem starts elsewhere. Monroe, for all her inviting lips, heavy buttocks, and big breasts, had a charming innocence to her. This persona might be incompatible with reality: She could be difficult to work with, and had undergone a series of exploitations, which did not leave her even after her demise. But her on-screen image was of a woman who was honey sweet and wholesome, at once pure even as she induced manic lust.

Sweeney, on the other hand, is in the category of those intellectual actors who demand respect for their craft. It is easy to feel disenchanted when she capitalises on her own objectification, but it is also easy to feel assuaged when she is a part of critically acclaimed projects.

Jenner, however, seems rather straight. We can be sculpted, and remade in the image of the siren. How depressing is that? Women have been contorting themselves to fit into a desirable mould, since, well, centuries.

Let us not forget Jenner has a legion of female fans who adores her. Recently, in a TikTok comment section, she made the details of her breast augmentation surgery public. Like anything around her, there was skepticism around this bout of authenticity. Nonetheless, it was endearing.

In a culture that gaslights women in grievous ways, maybe, in Jenner, women see an essential truth. That it is not possible to just wake up and be like Monroe or Sweeney. Jenner might be a girlboss, but she is not a gatekeeper.

This article first appeared in Cosmopolitan India's July-August 2025 print edition.

All images: Getty Images 

Also read: Is Sydney Sweeney going to be the next Bond Girl?

Also read: Why man-repellent make-up is the boldest beauty statement