At a time when women in sport are still fighting to be taken seriously, Sydney Sweeney is using her image - and, quite literally, her naked body - to sell sports betting. The campaign for Novig, where Sweeney is both a strategic partner and shareholder, has triggered a strong backlash from female athletes across different sports.
On social media, many responded by showing what their disciplines actually look like: muscles, sweat, training sessions, crashes, exhaustion, victories. The parts of women’s sport that have nothing to do with being desirable. And clearly, there is still a need to make that point. Just last March, after 17 months of negotiations, WNBA players secured higher salaries following years of pressure over pay inequality. In June, the EBU and European Athletics issued new guidelines for broadcasters designed to reduce the sexualisation of female athletes and change the language and imagery used to portray them.
And it was only a few years ago that Luis Rubiales, then president of the Spanish Football Federation, kissed Jenni Hermoso without her consent during a medal ceremony; that former Sampdoria president Massimo Ferrero compared a goal to a woman, saying it was “not there to be looked at, but to be penetrated”; or that Felice Belloli, the former president of Italy’s National Amateur League, dismissed women’s football as a game for “four lesbians”. The list could go on.
That context helps explain why Sweeney’s campaign has caused such a strong reaction. It relies on the sexualisation of a woman to market a product rooted in a largely male environment, one where a certain kind of locker-room culture has long been normalised. Ariarne Titmus, Amy Hunt, Sophie Capewell, Demi Vollering, Gracie Kramer and many others have read the campaign as a step backwards from the progress women in sport have been fighting for in recent years. Another reminder that, even now, a woman’s body is still treated as one of the easiest ways to grab attention.
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