Teyah Parent, features editor

Sydney Sweeney’s recent sports betting advertisement is incredibly disappointing. It’s not that she chose to be provocative, not that women are required to consistently present themselves modestly and not even because I hate Sydney Sweeney. The problem is that the advertisement associates successful women with the willingness to sell their bodies.

The campaign for the company Novig places Sydney Sweeney in a series of sports while emphasizing her sex. She poses nude with sporting equipment covering her chest and crotch while in athletic spaces such as baseball, basketball, or hockey. Despite being barren and talking quite seductively, she repeatedly insists that the underlying meaning is simply sports betting. Anyone with critical thinking skills knows better. This isn’t subjective. This advertisement—which is supposed to be promoting Novig’s sports betting app—uses Sydney Sweeney’s body to gain viewership. Sydney Sweeney is an individual performer and, in this case, a participant in a much larger advertising system. She is also an equity holder and creative partner in Novig; her involvement goes beyond appearing in front of the camera. This campaign is something we should have outgrown. It is a retreat into an extremely outdated and misogynistic formula: put an attractive woman in front of the camera, make her body the centerpiece and all of a sudden it’s okay because she agreed to participate. A woman can make that choice for herself, but the cultural message created by an advertisement must be taken into consideration. 

There is not a place on this earth where the roles could be reversed. We would never have a Kalshi ad starring an oversexualized male actor posing with his bare crotch behind a basketball and insinuating to the viewer to bet on sports. I am not advocating for that either. It is simply infuriating how women are still being shown and interpreted in the media. Our worth is not defined by how sexy we are. Feminism has spent decades dismantling the idea that a woman’s greatest value is how effectively she can attract attention. And then an advertisement comes along and tells us, essentially, that we are still buying the same idea. Women have spent so long trying to be seen as more than our bodies for decades, and Novig’s directing of Sydney Sweeney has set this movement back.

This also creates a spur of journalistic problems. Controversial advertising functions as a machine for generating its own news coverage. The campaign has created outrage. Journalists write about the atrocity, social media amplifies the articles and suddenly an advertisement that might otherwise have been ignored becomes a cultural event. Controversy and virality have to have been central to the campaign’s strategy, as in many other controversial campaigns throughout the decade. Journalism is becoming free advertising for companies that manufacture controversy. Every headline, reaction video and social-media debate keeps the brand in public conversation. That should make journalists pause.

That is not progress. It is a million steps backwards. With people like Sydney Sweeney and companies like Novig at the head of these decisions, the feminist movement has been brought down. I fear that women like Sydney Sweeney are not thinking beyond a paycheck. They are not thinking about the impact this has on female athletes, journalists, directors and women as a whole. We as a society should have enough media literacy skills to understand that this advertisement is harmful and disgraceful.