The sports-betting world has apparently stumbled upon a previously-undiscovered law of human nature and decided to exploit the hell out of it.
Are you even ready for this?
Sex sells.
I’m not making that up. It turns out that people—in particular, the ones assigned male at birth—don’t altogether dislike looking at extraordinarily hot, minimally clothed women. Armed with this shocking new knowledge, the (previously) obscure sports-prediction site Novig decided to feature objectively smokin’ actress Sydney Sweeney—wearing nothing but some strategically placed sports equipment—in its new ad campaign.
If outrage were tequila shots, we’d all be getting our stomachs pumped right now.
“Sydney Sweeney advert sparks backlash from female athletes,” The New York Times declared. “What, beyond near-naked tennis, is Sydney Sweeney’s game?” The Guardian wanted to know. Australian surfer Felicity Palmateer condemned the campaign as “incredibly disappointing,” and accused Sweeney of sending women’s sports back several decades in forty sexist seconds. “We want to be valued for what we can do, not what we look like,” Palmateer pouted.
American gymnast Gracie Kramer posted a highlight reel of herself doing spectacular, gravity-defying tricks with the caption, “Idk what Sydney Sweeney was doing, but this is what a woman in sports looks like.” Four-time Olympic gold medalist swimmer Ariarne Titmus called the campaign “a kick in the face to every woman who has dedicated her life to perfecting her craft” before asking, “How do we live in a world where monetising a woman’s body and sexualising women’s sport is still a thing?” [The quote is from the BBC, hence the Queen’s English.]
I am confused by Titmus’s confusion. Sydney Sweeney is not a woman in sports. She is an actress in an advertisement for a betting website. She is not competing with female athletes, speaking for female athletes, or being presented as Team USA’s hottest new recruit. Nobody saw her straddling a basketball hoop in the altogether and immediately wondered if she could take Sophie Cunningham at the free-throw line. Nobody saw her covering her boobs with a pair of pigskins and thought, “Wow, someone finally created the WNFL!”
Sweeney’s being offered as the face—and, let’s be honest, several other body parts—of Novig. And if athletes can rent out their mugs to everything from Icy Hot to McDonald’s, tell me again how Sweeney is so out of line here?
(Oh, right. The boobs.)
I am not sure if the ladies of the pro-athlete circuit realize this, but we live in a world where hot bodies are used to sell [*checks notes*] literally everything. Paris Hilton washed a Bentley half-naked to peddle burgers. Cindy Crawford leveraged her endless legs to push Pepsi. GoDaddy spent years using cleavage to get people excited about domain names. UFC champ Ronda Rousey—a legitimate female athlete—used her considerable assets to pimp a breakfast sandwich (without violating Title IX). There’s a reason nobody ever cast Danny DeVito in a commercial for compression shorts, is what I’m saying.
According to the media, the backlash has been fast, fierce, and unforgiving. According to math, Novig’s sexy new spokesmodel (and equity partner) didn’t just put them on the map—she redrew the whole damned globe.
In the crowded prediction-market business, a relatively small, niche player like Novig could spend years patiently building brand awareness and explaining why its platform was better than anyone else’s, or go full Calvin Klein and take Sydney Sweeney’s clothes off. The strategic off-site was brief.
“No betting on wars or deaths and no politics,” Sweeney purrs from atop a billiards table wearing only a pair of boxer briefs and a smile. “Just you, your takes, and sports.”
Prior to the “Just Sports” campaign launch, Novig was averaging roughly 392 media mentions per week. During the launch window, mentions exploded to 4,633—an unprecedented increase of nearly 1,180% in four days. I guess a few yards of taut, tanned, unclothed skin and some cleverly arranged hockey sticks will do that.
The part I keep coming back to is that Sydney Sweeney is an actress. Pretending to be things she isn’t is literally the job description. Hell, Hardee’s once paid a bunch of models to put on bikinis and pretend to be beach-volleyball players, and I don’t recall MLV declaring an organization-wide emergency or squawking about appropriation.
“Critics say the ad uses Sweeney’s body to appeal to a largely male audience,” Fox News posted on X. (No word on how many “critics” they had to interview to come to this stunning conclusion.) With all due respect, of course it does. Do we actually have to pretend that red-blooded men don’t like looking at beautiful women the way women like looking at pictures of aggressively organized pantries with matching glass jars? I mean, okay. Sure. If that’s what helps you sleep at night.
To be clear, I’m not here to champion the objectification of women. I’m here—as someone with a degree and a background in advertising—to acknowledge a brilliantly executed campaign. Because in the ad world, the goal isn’t to make people like you. It’s to make sure they know your name. If that takes ruffling a few feathers, get Big Bird on the set. Preferably naked.
NOVIG: We deeply regret that our attempt to get millions of people to look at Sydney Sweeney mostly naked has resulted in millions of people looking at Sydney Sweeney mostly naked.
And does anyone seriously believe Sweeney—fresh off last year’s Great American Eagle Eugenics Emergency—is currently curled up in the fetal position, wondering whether it might be time to hang up her birthday suit and put on a cardigan?
Her response suggests otherwise. The controversial bombshell silently clapped back by posting a series of photos of actual athletes posing naked, including Serena Williams, Caroline Wozniacki, Sue Bird and Megan Rapinoe. Hilariously, most of the pictures were pulled from ESPN’s famous Body Issue, which spent 11 years photographing more than 200 elite athletes undressed in what ESPN called a celebration of the “power of the athletic form.”
Apparently naked bodies and sporting equipment peacefully coexisted for more than a decade without causing the collapse of female athletics. The obvious difference is that ESPN was celebrating bodies that do extraordinary things while Novig is shamelessly using an extraordinary-looking body to sell something.
I don’t know who needs to hear this, but that would be the advertisement part.
I get that female athletes want their physical forms to be appreciated above all—or even exclusively—for what they can do and not what they look like. That’s completely fair. But I’m struggling to understand how adding sporting equipment to an age-old sales gimmick turns it into an attack on their collective profession. T&A has been used to hawk everything from cars to guitars since the first bikini-clad bum upstaged the fender it was leaning against, and nobody’s ever mistaken an ad for a referendum on women’s place in the automotive/beer/fast-food industry.
“To see women’s sports once again being marketed through the male gaze feels like a massive step backward,” Kramer said.
Wait, where are all my body-positive feminists? My you-go-girls? My don’t-make-yourself-small-for-a-man ladies? I thought the strippers had all the power and the dudes feeding singles into their thongs were the suckers. I thought we were supposed to be radical, bold, and unapologetic. I thought the way to subvert the patriarchy was by owning our sexuality. Did I miss a meeting?
Again, Sydney Sweeney does not represent women in sports. She represents Novig. And Novig did not partner with her because it had a pressing need to ignite a more nuanced conversation about female athleticism. It partnered with her because sex sells, Sydney Sweeney sells, and sexy Sydney Sweeney sells like toilet paper during a pandemic.
You don’t have to like that, but pretending it isn’t true won’t make Sydney Sweeney put her clothes back on.
Good for her! If I looked like that , I’d be naked all the time.😂 It’s doesn’t diminish women at all to me. Sex does sell and I find it amusing.
Sorry, what was the question??? LOL!!!!
I think there's a facet to this that is similar to TDS. Trump has a lot of money and there are haters who are jealous because Trump has something they will never have. Similar thing with Sydney Sweeney. She has a lot of sex appeal and there are gonna be haters because she has what they will never have.