CNN Columnist Whines About Problem So Dumb, It’s Hard To Believe It’s Not Satire

Leave it to feminists and their allies to whip up a complaint from thin air. 

“This summer, I got cultural whiplash,” writes Madeline Holcombe for CNN, lamenting the right’s ascension.

Holcombe mourns the “evidence of progress” she ingested in her “media diet” over the past decade.

“The movies, shows, books and advertisements I consumed were increasingly giving women a seat at the table. Heroin chic fell away, and body positivity entered the fashion world. Stories about a woman stealing your man were traded for celebration of the ‘girl’s girl’ who resisted the competition for men’s attention.”

“Then there was a shift.”

Holcombe considers various turning points: President Donald Trump (a second time), the overturn of Roe v. Wade, an air of tedium with the contradictions and excesses of #MeToo. Ozempic. 

And Sydney Sweeney.

The male gaze is literally the instinct responsible for the continuation of our entire species you moron

Favoring ugly ambiguous forms of humanity isn’t “progress” pic.twitter.com/KvvJhl3yz4

— Melissa Chen (@MsMelChen) October 12, 2025

Holcombe offers Sweeney’s ad as an example of the “male gaze,” recounting American Eagle’s sultry summer ad campaign with Sweeney. You remember. Good jeans, good genes. (RELATED: Outrage At Sydney Sweeney’s Blonde, Busty Looks Sums Up Why Lefties Are Losing The Culture War)

There’s a simple explanation for objections to the “male gaze.” Women are competitive. 

Attractive women provoke jealousy and anger in less attractive women. Especially when men signal that they prefer the former class.

Attractive women keep the competition in check by encouraging their friends to get a really short haircut. Or, perhaps more commonly: “You don’t need to lose weight! You’re beautiful just as you are.”

The “male gaze” is what it sounds like. Men looking at things. Including women. That observation, in and of itself, seems to offend Holcombe’s sensibilities. 

Holcombe praises the “female gaze,” and media which demonstrates “how women can be sexual without being objectified.” 

Showcasing Sweeney’s assets is obviously going to appeal to men. And American Eagle does sell men’s jeans. But Sweeney’s ad also plays on female desire: “Buy these jeans, and men might want you like they want me.”

By “male gaze” they just mean some companies stopped trying to virtue signal by forcing hideous freaks into every ad campaign. pic.twitter.com/IvBlawuevh

— Flappr (@flapprdotnet) October 13, 2025

Of course, I’m sure Holcombe would interpret this as the internalized male gaze pervading the way women see themselves. And that might be true. And it’s fine. (RELATED: Men Only Want One Thing)

There’s a quote attributed to Margaret Atwood and oft cited by feminists. 

“Male fantasies, male fantasies, is everything run by male fantasies? Up on a pedestal or down on your knees, it’s all a male fantasy: that you’re strong enough to take what they dish out, or else too weak to do anything about it. Even pretending you aren’t catering to male fantasies is a male fantasy: pretending you’re unseen, pretending you have a life of your own, that you can wash your feet and comb your hair unconscious of the ever-present watcher peering through the keyhole, peering through the keyhole in your own head, if nowhere else. You are a woman with a man inside watching a woman. You are your own voyeur.”

Tough luck, I guess?

Freeing yourself of the male gaze is a lost cause, if we’re to believe Atwood. And I choose to believe her, because it’s funny when female-empowerment types accidentally find common ground with Andrew Tate types. 

Follow Natalie Sandoval on X: @NatSandovalDC