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An advertising campaign starring American actress Sydney Sweeney has sparked a wave of criticism from athletes, who claim it sexualizes women in sports.
In the advertisement for the platform Novig, a sports betting marketplace, Sweeney appears with little or no clothing, covering parts of her body with strategically placed soccer balls and other sports apparel.
Many athletes criticized the ad on social media and labeled it disrespectful toward women.
“I can’t describe how furious I feel when I see this. How do we live in a world where monetizing a woman's body and sexualizing women's sports is still a thing?”, wrote swimmer Ariarne Titmus, a four-time Olympic gold medalist, on Instagram.
British sprinter Amy Hunt addressed the actress in a post-race interview with the BBC on Sunday, after finishing fourth in the 200 meters at the Ultimate Championship in Budapest, Hungary.
“Sydney Sweeney, this is what women in sports look like,” she stated, looking into the camera. “Muscle, hard work, sweat, blood, tears.”
Former American gymnast Gracie Kramer called the ad outrageous.
“I have spent my whole life competing in a sport where female athletes have been hyper-sexualized, reduced to our bodies and forced to fight to be taken seriously for what we can actually do,” she expressed on Instagram.
Kramer posted stories with images of athletes training with the text: “This is what a woman in sports looks like.”
Sofie Fella, a Chinese-German rugby player, noted that athletes can be role models for girls and women because they manage to “untangle” themselves from social ideals of beauty and femininity.
“And that is why that Sydney Sweeney ad is so disrespectful to every single athlete in the world,” she maintained in an Instagram post.
Novig did not immediately respond to an email requesting comment. A publicist for Sweeney also did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In an apparent reference to the criticism, Sweeney posted a series of covers from ESPN The Magazine’s “Body Issue” over the weekend, an annual special edition that featured athletes posing nude or semi-nude as a celebration of body diversity.
Sweeney, a two-time Emmy nominee, starred in and produced “Christy” last year, a biopic about American professional boxer Christy Martin.
It is not the first time her brand partnerships have generated debate; her 2025 American Eagle campaign, which made a pun on the homophones “jeans” and “genes,” had already sparked a wide conversation online.
[Publicidad]