How Sydney Sweeney’s Critics Are Showing More Than She Is

And now for the stupid controversy of the day. 

Sydney Sweeney is a good-looking woman.

That’s inarguable, but online everything is arguable. She would not be famous if she were not good-looking.

Let’s point out how wild things have gotten. Sydney Sweeney is doing an ad for a sports betting app called Novig.  The ad involves her being scantily clad. In the opening shot, she holds two footballs in front of her greatest assets, then poses, still scantily clad, with various pieces of sporting equipment.

People went crazy. Beatriz Hatz, a U.S. Paralympian and “Love Island” season eight contestant, was very, very upset.

When I talk about people who aren’t exhibitionists, I go straight to “Love Island” contestants.

Hatz wrote, “Instead of watching Sydney Sweeney’s ads, let’s watch actual women in sports.”

Sorry that people don’t want to watch your athletic feats as much as people generally are drawn to good-looking naked people.

American artistic gymnast Gracie Kramer fired, “This ad is honestly infuriating. I’ve spent my entire life competing in a sport where female athletes have been oversexualized, reduced to our bodies, and forced to fight to be taken seriously for what we can actually do.”

Sydney Sweeney was not claiming to be a gymnast or a baseball player. That was not my impression of that ad. 

Let’s be real, people weren’t watching the ad for the sports stats. 

Kramer continued, “So to see women’s sports once again being marketed through the male gaze feels like a massive step backward. We should not have to take our clothes off to convince men that women belong in sports, or that we’re only worth watching if we’re showing enough skin.”

Sweeney was not making the case that she was trying to make the WNBA.

“And if you still don’t think it’s that deep, I invite you to do your best to empathize with every female athlete who has had to compete while simultaneously being objectified on the court, disrespected on the field, and oversexualized in the media,” Kramer wrote.

I have a question for Kramer: What does this have to do with you? I feel like you are inserting yourself into this story.

“I don’t typically speak out on controversial topics, but to me, this isn’t controversial,” Kramer declared. “This is about demanding respect for female athletes and protecting the future of women in sports.”

What the heck? Sydney Sweeney is not a woman in sports. She’s a woman in a sports commercial. 

Sweeney posted covers of ESPN’s Body Issue in response. ESPN has been doing this ridiculous Body Issue for years, where they get a bunch of athletes to pose nude. I always thought it was strange. 

In a statement to the Novig website, Sweeney said, “The campaign was about embracing a fun idea. The concept is simple: Cut through the noise and put the focus entirely on sports. The campaign brings that idea to life with confidence, humor, and a playful edge.”

Our friend Clay Travis had some thoughts, saying:

Women’s athletics is in no way impacted by a pro sports gambling ad by Sydney Sweeney, but why in the world is it the case that anyone would even make that connection, especially when female athletes, by and large, are staying quiet about men competing in women’s sports? Don’t you think that if you were going to talk about things that are attacking female athletics, you might say, “Hey, maybe the WNBA should be able to tell us what the W in WNBA stands for. Maybe we should keep men out of women’s locker rooms. Maybe we should keep boys out of girls’ locker rooms?” Instead, these women are claiming that they’re offended by Sydney Sweeney.

He is 100% correct. 

I want to point out something else that’s funny. All of this shows you how far we have moved in the American public discourse. 

There was a 2005 ad that was very controversial in its time, but now seems tame by comparison. It was a Carl’s Jr. commercial featuring Paris Hilton. I remember this ad because it came out right around the time my book, “Porn Generation,” came out about the pornification of American society. 

I’ve been on the anti-porn bandwagon for literally decades, and I have been irritated by female nudity used to market sports for pretty much all my life. I was a long-time subscriber to Sports Illustrated, and I’m one of the seven people who called up Sports Illustrated and said, “Please don’t send the swimsuit edition, which has nothing to do with sports. Please just give me an extra edition of the magazine about baseball and basketball.”

The Carl’s Jr. ad showed Paris Hilton in a bathing suit soaping up a car. She was wearing more clothes than Sydney Sweeney, and it launched a thousand think pieces.

The ad made a lot of headlines back then, and I’m old enough to remember when conservatives thought that was bad.

So here’s the point: I still think this stuff is kind of bad. I’m not in favor of it — but the reason we are seeing so many conservatives rushing to defend Sydney Sweeney is because of how far the Left has moved: In 2005, they defended the Paris Hilton commercial because they said pornography was good.

That was the case. Sex work was work. Pornography was good. Shatter the systems through nudity. 

The Right responded, “No, we’re not doing any of that.”

But now the Left has moved all the way from where they were to “Boys can be girls.” Additionally, “Female beauty isn’t a thing,” and “Sydney Sweeney isn’t a beautiful woman,” and “We don’t even know if she is a woman. Maybe she’s a man.” And “Maybe a dude with a twig and berries is more of a woman than Sydney Sweeney.” And “Being fat and ugly is a new form of beauty.”

These statements all show you how far the Left has moved. Thus the Right responded, ”You know what is good? Good-looking women.”

Things have gotten crazy over the past 20 years. It was a more innocent time in 2005, when we debated whether those commercials were appropriate. 

Now the debate is over whether women exist in humanity and whether there are, in fact, standards of beauty that are clearly applicable.

All of this tells us more about where we’ve moved as a society than it does about Sydney Sweeney  — or sports.

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