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Over a year after courting controversy with an American Eagle ad, actor Sydney Sweeney is facing another firestorm for a racy campaign in which she appears in various states of undress. Posing for the sports trading app Novig, Sweeney has stirred a debate regarding oversexualization in the world of advertising.
A ‘kick in the face’
Despite not wanting to “give this any more attention,” Australian Olympic swimmer Ariarne Titmus posted on Instagram that she could not “keep” her “mouth shut” upon seeing the ad, per the Sydney Morning Herald. Sweeney’sad is not only a “kick in the face to every woman who has dedicated her life to perfecting her craft” but also to every woman who enjoys sports for what it really is: “teamwork, friendship, dedication, excellence, unity,” Titmus wrote. How do we live in a world where “monetizing a woman’s body and sexualizing women’s sport is still a thing?”
The criticism isn’t about “being jealous or insecure,” it is about this already being a “male-dominated field” where women are “constantly having to prove why we belong,” Marissa Womack, the manager of game day promotions and programming for the minor league baseball team the Harrisburg Senators, said in a TikTok video, per The Hollywood Reporter. The backlash against Sweeney is coming in defense of “having passions and joy working in this industry” since when the “only representation is sexualization,” you see “less and less young women wanting to pursue this!”
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The controversy is about “more than one advertisement,” Vivienne Lewis, a clinical psychologist, said at The Conversation. It “raises a bigger issue” about the “attention we give to what women look like” rather than “who they are and what they can do.” Body image includes “our thoughts, feelings and attitudes toward our bodies” and how much “importance we place on appearance when valuing ourselves.” Sports provide a “wonderful opportunity to shift that focus.” This is why the “discussion goes beyond Sweeney” or elite athletes. It isn’t about “criticizing Sweeney’s body or telling women what they should wear.” The more useful question is “why we give appearance so much importance in the first place.”
‘Hardly an unusual strategy’
Not to be a “crazed optimist,” said Marina Hyde at The Guardian, but the great thing about where women’s sport is today is that it “feels a whole lot bigger and stronger and more compelling” than whether Sweeney “did or didn’t get her tits out for a gambling ad.” It would have been “cooler for women’s sport” to simply “not even mention the naked gambling ad at all.” If it felt it had to, maybe “focus on the gambling bit rather than the woman advertising it.” Instinct says “gambling wrecks a lot more lives than Sydney Sweeney.”
We all know “exactly what Sydney Sweeney was doing,” advertising copywriter Paul Burke said at The Spectator. She was “selling a sports betting app.” She did not “pretend that she was an elite athlete.” Neither did she “decry the great talent, strength and sacrifice involved in becoming one.” Athletes “weren’t even mentioned.”
Novig’s decision to cast Sydney Sweeney was a “savvy one,” Burke said. Her “sultry and provocative performance,” building on last year’s “denim-based outrage,” was bound to “appeal to the people most likely to download this app.” This is “hardly an unusual strategy.” To “rage against beautiful people in adverts” is as pointless as “raging against athletic people in the 400 meter hurdles.” As far as Sweeney is concerned, the “voluble minority” who told the world how much they hated the ad “played right into her hands.” The “power of smart, cynical advertising” and a “certain brand of female empowerment” have once again “emerged victorious.”
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Theara Coleman has worked as a staff writer at The Week since September 2022. She frequently writes about technology, education, literature and general news. She was previously a contributing writer and assistant editor at Honeysuckle Magazine, where she covered racial politics and cannabis industry news.
