Why female athletes lose their mind over Sydney Sweeney’s ad — but stay quiet on men in women’s sports
Sydney Sweeney is doing what Sydney Sweeney does.
She is hot and she knows it. She is using her hotness to sell something. The something happens to be Novig, a sports betting app.
So she’s holding footballs.
She is not pretending to be an athlete; she is being a woman men like to look at.
That is the entire point of the ad.
Predictably, a posse of female athletes is furious.
Former UCLA gymnast Gracie Kramer posted a training montage: “idk what Sydney Sweeney was doing, but this is what a woman in sports looks like.”
Sydney isn’t claiming to be an athlete — she’s just being hot while holding sports balls.
Kramer said female athletes have been over-sexualized and forced to fight to be taken seriously.
Female gymnasts are taken seriously: Gymnastics may be the only sport on Earth where the women are taken more seriously than the men.
Kramer claimed the ad proves women’s sports are “marketed through the male gaze.”
But Novig isn’t marketing women’s sports: It’s marketing a betting app for men.
“We should not have to take our clothes off to convince men that women belong in sports,” Kramer lectured.
Gracie, we don’t need to convince men we belong — we need to convince men to stay out of our sports.
Surfer Felicity Palmateer piled on, calling Sweeney’s ad “very damaging” for girls coming into sport.
You know what’s also damaging for girls? Getting beaten by a boy and being told to let him have the trophy.
All major surfing bodies allow males in the women’s category.
My daughter is about to turn 10. I hope she never wants to pose naked in ads.
I do not want her on OnlyFans. I want her to use her brain and her courage, not her cleavage.
But I refuse to pretend Sweeney is “bringing women down” while these same people treat other naked bodies as art.
Lizzo nude in Paper: body positivity.
Dylan Mulvaney nude in Paper: stunning and brave.
Aly Raisman nude in the ESPN Body Issue: celebrating the athletic form.
Sabrina Carpenter on her knees, getting her hair pulled: sexual empowerment.
Sweeney holds two footballs over her chest for a betting app, and suddenly women’s rights are finished.
Please.
The difference is not the nudity.
The difference is that Sweeney is right-coded — presumed Republican-adjacent if not MAGA. That’s the charge, without anyone saying it.
The same people who call prostitution “sex work” and call OnlyFans “girlboss entrepreneurship” lose their minds when the woman in question might vote wrong.
Want to talk about commodifying the female body?
Men slathering on makeup, pumping silicone into their chests, carving their faces with “feminization surgery” — that literally is commodifying women’s bodies.
Ladies, get it together. It’s right before your eyes.
Sweeney is not mocking female athletes.
She is not stealing their records.
She is not a man shoving girls off the podium.
She is selling a product.
The women shouting “commodifying women’s bodies” only seem to notice when the body belongs to someone they’ve already decided is the enemy.
That is not feminism. That is hypocrisy — and naked factionalism.
Jennifer Sey, founder and CEO of XX-XY Athletics, writes Sey Everything on Substack.