1. Cindy-Lou is barely mentioned in the Dr. Seuss story.
2. She is hardly “beloved” or even particularly well-known. She was given special prominence in the over-blown film version of the story, “The Grinch,” which was distinctly inferior to the famous animated version narrated by Boris Karloff in the Sixties.
3. The character isn’t even human. She’s a Who, creatures so small their whole civilization is invisible to the naked eye. [See: “Horton Hears a Who.”]
4. In that mediocre Ron Howard Christmas movie, Cindy-Lou was played by Taylor Momson. Here is what the actress grew up into…
She turned Cindy Lou into a sex symbol if anyone did.
5. Portraying famous fictional girls as sexy teens and adults is a longtime tradition that hasn’t been deemed shocking except to the most puritanical of old fogies since the 1950s. Playboy had a regular feature starring “Little Annie Fanny,” a satire on “Little Orphan Annie.” Annie Fanny looked like this:
Little Orphan Annie was as innocent as one can get. Conservatives who clutched their metaphorical pearls over the Playboy spoof were, quite correctly, dismissed as censorious jerks. Then there is Pippi Longstocking: Tomi Lahren, who played her in the movies, is also all grown up, and there’s a sexy Pippi costume for Halloween that presumably won’t be called “disgusting”:
“Dora the Explorer” is mighty innocent, but her imagined grown-up version is apparently popular in cosplay according to TikTok….
Then there are the darling “Powerpuff Girls,” who have been portrayed live and in various forms as “Powerpuff Women”:
Jumping all over Sydney Sweeney for engaging in the mildest form of this trope is silly and unfair, especially when she is only being targeted for the imagined offense of not hewing to progressive cant, and and when her critics have simultaneous defended of all manner of sexual expression and–shall we say it?—perversion.
And besides, isn’t it grand that little girls get bigger every day? Sing it, Maurice!
Where are the memes which have Sweeney posing in such provocative ways and saying, “No, seriously. I don’t just identify as a man. I am a man’s man. Isn’t it obvious to the naked eye?”
Cindy Lou Who (who is now not “no more than 2”) is going to have to fight the boys off with a stick!
Iff ze nightingale
could sing like you
He sing much better
zhan he do-oo-oo…
Maurice transitioned seamlessly from a dirty young man to a dirty old man. But charming!
Until I saw this clip, I think Harpo’s record player scene in “Monkey Business” was the only time I’d ever heard him.
He’d be run out of town as a pedophile, and possibly arrested, if he did that scene today. Sheesh.
The reprise is worse, which ends the film. Maurice is singing the song as we see how Gigi has “gotten bigger.” That one is in “That’s Entertainment” and struck me as oogie when the movie first came out.
I’d like to know how Ms. Sweeney learned to make her upper eyelids droop down to partially obscure her irises? I guess it’s supposed to make her seem as if she’s alluring and ready for action, but it just strikes me as making her look absolutely bovine.
Bill! The woman is a busy, successful actress, runs a lingerie company and finds time to spend with her very handsome fiance. The poor thing has droopy, exhausted eyes ….
Hah! That explains it! What was I thinking?
Taken out of the context of Sydney’s prior body of work, I see nothing sexual in the photo above. She’s just a girl. Who says that actors cannot play diverse roles?
The “sexy female elf”, sometimes in the company of a “naughty Santa” seems to have been around for a while without too many people worrying about kids being traumatized by it.
MLB is currently running Sydney Sweeney ads for a sports prediction market (Novig). Better, actually, than a lot of the commercials I see or hear when listening to baseball.