Recently, most of us probably came across yet another controversial Sydney Sweeney advertisement. This time, it was a provocative campaign for the sports betting platform NOVIG, featuring Sweeney nude and strategically covered by sports equipment.
As someone who isn’t easily rattled by the latest social media controversy, I had surprisingly mixed feelings when I first saw the campaign. Part of me leans a little more traditional, so seeing such overtly sexual imagery used in mainstream advertising felt jarring, especially in an age when younger audiences are constantly exposed to advertisements across many platforms. But another part of me felt uncomfortable for a different reason. It wasn’t simply because there was a naked woman on my screen. It was because I found myself wondering what, if anything, the campaign says about how we define female empowerment in the first place.
For years, women have fought against being reduced to their bodies while also fighting for the freedom to embrace their sexuality without judgment. These ideas aren’t necessarily contradictory, but campaigns like Sweeney’s complicate the line between them. While critics argue that sexualized portrayals “set us back generations,” others see choosing to profit from one’s sexuality as autonomy. So, when does sexual expression become empowerment, and when does it become objectification? Why did Sweeney’s campaign strike such a nerve with an increasingly sex-positive generation?
It Was Never Really About Women in Sports
The main reason Sweeney’s advertisement has drawn criticism is the belief that it portrays women in sports through an undermining lens. Female athletes have fought for decades to be taken seriously while facing disparities in pay, coverage, and recognition, with their appearances often scrutinized alongside their abilities. Given that history, it is understandable why some women view Sweeney’s portrayal as insensitive or diminishing. However, I have a slightly different, and perhaps unpopular take: I don’t think that is what we should be upset about.
Sweeney is not a female athlete, nor is she advertising women’s sports. She is advertising a sports betting platform, an industry whose audience has historically skewed heavily male. As uncomfortable as it may be to acknowledge, the combination of gambling and sex seems far from accidental. Sweeney and the advertisers strategically bring these elements together to capture attention and sell a product. And though we may dislike the strategy, the amount of conversation surrounding the campaign suggests that it worked.
The advertisement was never really about women; it was about attracting its intended consumer. Sweeney’s status as a sex symbol has become commercially valuable, and in campaigns like this, her sexuality becomes part of what is being sold. So, are we getting distraught over the wrong thing? Rather than focusing on what the ad says about female athletes, perhaps we should ask why, in an era supposedly moving beyond female objectification, the female body remains such a powerful marketing strategy.
The Female Body as a Marketing Strategy
In my high school English class, a significant part of our curriculum involved analyzing advertisements. If there was one principle drilled into my head, it was this: always keep the target audience in mind. That principle helps explain why the age-old ideology that “sex sells” has survived in advertising for decades. Despite continuous criticism of the objectification it perpetuates, the strategy continues to succeed for one frustratingly simple reason: it gets attention.
With that in mind, Sweeney’s nudity in the NOVIG campaign doesn’t seem random, nor does it necessarily seem intended to represent women at all. Her sexuality is the advertising mechanism. Her body captures the viewer’s attention; the provocative imagery generates controversy; the controversy generates conversation; and NOVIG receives publicity. From a purely commercial perspective, the formula is almost painfully effective. But understanding why a marketing strategy works does not mean we should stop questioning what allows it to work.
If society has spent decades challenging the idea that a woman’s value lies in her sex appeal, why does the female body remain such reliable advertising currency? There is an important difference between being sexualized without consent and choosing to capitalize on one’s sexuality, an agency generations of women were often denied. Still, choice does not make something immune from criticism. Women have fought to be valued for their intelligence, talent, ambition, and individuality, yet advertising repeatedly returns to the same formula: put a conventionally attractive woman in as little clothing as possible and wait for people to look.
Perhaps that is what makes campaigns like Sweeney’s so complicated. The question isn’t whether a woman can profit from her sexuality, but what we reinforce when sexuality remains one of the easiest ways to command attention and profit. At what point does taking control of objectification challenge the system, and when does it simply prove the system still works? For Sweeney, that question becomes especially relevant given her complicated relationship with being viewed as a sex symbol.
Sweeney’s Complicated Relationship With Being a Sex Symbol
Since her breakout role as the troubled Cassie Howard in Euphoria, a character whose complicated relationship with sexuality is central to her storyline, Sweeney has spoken openly about her discomfort with the intense sexualization and scrutiny of her body that followed her portrayal. Although Sweeney has admitted that she has grown “used to” the sexualization surrounding her public image, she has also expressed hope that her career will eventually earn recognition beyond the character and image that first defined her.
And I think that is where much of the backlash begins. Sweeney has openly acknowledged her highly publicized sexuality and her status as a pop-culture “sex symbol”. That image has followed her far beyond Euphoria. From films such as Anyone but You and The Housemaid to provocative campaigns like her bathwater soap collaboration and the widely debated American Eagle denim advertisement—in which she quips, “Hey, eyes up here,” as the camera deliberately pans down her body—sexual innuendo has become a recurring element of the Sydney Sweeney brand.
That is what makes Sweeney’s discomfort with sexualization so complicated. She has spoken about wanting recognition beyond the characters and physical image that defined her career, yet continues to participate in campaigns that capitalize on that very perception. While choosing to profit from one’s sexuality differs from objectification without consent, it raises a fair question: if Sweeney wants to escape being reduced to a sex symbol, why does that image remain so central to how she markets herself? Having control over your sexuality may change who profits from the objectification, but it doesn’t necessarily change the image being sold.
Maybe the Ad Worked a Little Too Well
At the end of the day, the NOVIG advertisement accomplished exactly what an advertisement is designed to do: it made people look. But perhaps its success reveals something more uncomfortable than the controversy itself. The problem was never simply that Sydney Sweeney posed provocatively for a sports betting campaign, nor was it necessarily about diminishing women in sports. It was that advertisers knew exactly what would capture attention. Once again, the female body proved to be remarkably effective.
Sweeney has every right to decide how she presents herself and what parts of her image she chooses to profit from. But having the freedom to make that choice does not mean we have to stop questioning the culture that makes it so profitable in the first place. For generations, women have fought to be recognized as more than their bodies and desirability, yet those same qualities remain some of the easiest to monetize. Maybe, then, the NOVIG controversy should leave us with a different question: if we truly want women to be seen as more than their bodies, at what point do we have to stop rewarding a culture that keeps looking there first?