Sydney Sweeney’s public image has been the object of debate for many years, and now, following the release of a very controversial sports betting ad she is once again under the lens of the media.
The ad aired on the 9th of September 2026 featuring a naked Sweeney using sporting equipment to cover herself. She repeatedly says the phrase ‘Just sports.’ This phrase paired with nudity quickly drew criticism. Female athletes from around the globe have responded to the ad highlighting that women in sports have more to offer than wearing very little or looking sexy. It’s seen as concerning that a woman’s body is being used as an advertisement tool for a mainly male audience. The discourse following the advert, has mainly been aimed towards Sydney Sweeney, what I want to explore is whether Sweeney is responsible for the sexualisation towards women critics see, or if its an inherent issue within Hollywood and advertisement.
To try and determine the truth we need to look back; back to 2019, to the premiere of Euphoria. Sweeney’s global breakthrough role was Cassie Howard, a teenage girl whose storyline, among other things, deals with the immense humiliation and loss of control that comes with the situation of her nudes being leaked and circulated without her consent. Ironically, screenshots of Sydney began to fly around online out of context of the show after the program aired. Sweeney talked about the issue of her being sexualised online during an interview with Variety in June. She explained “I’ve always found it really interesting how people scrutinise how Cassie was treated on the show, and then they do it to me in real life.”
My attention was instantly drawn to the comparison, a character who story critics sexualisation has aided the actresses journey into becoming a sex-symbol in the real world.
I looked further into the development of Sweeney’s controversy, there’s been multiple more instances of her being sexualised by her roles, or even sexualising herself. An example of this was a 2024 SNL appearance, Sydney joked about her five year career plan being “Show boobs.” It seemed that Sweeney was well aware of the focus being put on her body and was comfortable joking about it on television.
There have been a few contentious adverts leading up to the most recent controversy. A Dr. Squatch video, where she knowingly used sexual marketing and repeatedly said that phrase ‘Dirty little boys’. As well as an American Eagle campaign which sparked a culture war on the use of the tagline “Sydney Sweeney has good jeans”. This campaign was critiqued for its possible undertones of eugenics/racially superior ideology with the connection between jeans/genes. Both were heavily debated and dissent was again aimed towards Sweeney. To me, the evolution of Sydney is shown through her monetising her body. The internet sexualised her, she realised that this sexualisation could lead to monetary value; and the way I see it, Sweeney begins to sell it back to the internet.
All this leads to the most recent Novig betting advert, the one that added fuel to the already scorching fire against Sydney Sweeney. The company, Novig has responded to criticism of the ad, claiming that it was never their intention to portray women in sports, the video was meant to be humorous. The CEO Jacob Fortinsky has been attempting to shift the focus back to Sweeney by saying “It really was Sydney who’s driving a lot of the visuals and the messaging”. This is strange to me. Yes, Sydney was probably involved partially in the creative side, but there will be a large marketing/advertising team behind an advert of this scale who approved this, facilitated it and are now attempting to push the heat back onto the already scrutinised Sweeney.
However, it was revealed that the actress supposedly approached Novig to collaborate, and is also an equity partner which gives her financial stake in the adverts performance. This changes the narrative slightly, it makes me question whether Sweeney, the product of an industry sexualising her body has incentive to create traction and traffic in advertisement by farming shock and controversy.
Despite researching these issues I am still without a definitive answer. Being shaped by the industry does not remove personal agency, but having agency does not remove the industry from the equation. And finally I ask: how much responsibility can we ethically place on a woman who learned to profit from a system that was already profiting from her.