Sydney Sweeney should be a feminist hero. While her management team at Paradigm Talent Agency and manager Jennifer Millar support her, Sweeney takes a direct, hands-on role in shaping and executing the strategic narratives behind her projects and commercial endorsements.
Beyond just acting as a brand ambassador, Sweeney actively pitches, crafts, and negotiates equity partnerships for campaigns. For instance, Novig CEO Jacob Fortinsky revealed that Sweeney directly approached the company for an equity partnership and helped write and design the messaging for their national ad campaigns.
Through her own production company, Fifty-Fifty Films, Sweeney retains executive producer control over her projects. This structure allows her to align media appearances, brand partnerships, and promotional tours directly with her production slate.
Isn't this exactly what feminism has been striving for over the last 60 years? A businesswoman with real power and influence, setting her own standards, and controlling her own destiny.
But Sweeney will never be feted by feminists or the left. She's just too darn pretty. And that makes unpretty women uncomfortable and, dare I say, jealous. They can deny it until the cows come home, but it is a universal truth, perhaps part of human female DNA: ordinary women feeling threatened by the spectacular beauty and sex appeal of women like Sweeney.
It was the Novig ad, a sports betting platform, that has stirred up controversy among female athletes and leftist cultural commentators. The barely clothed and (tastefully?) naked images of Sweeney in the ads have generated a hysterical reaction, especially among athletes.
Like Donald Trump, she has an instinct for the jugular. She knew full well what the reaction would be to her American Eagle jeans ads, and she knew it would send the left over the edge. Just as Trump regularly trolls the left, orchestrating their hysterical reactions to his outrageousness, Sweeney's carefully crafted viral and guerrilla PR strategies generate controversy and keep the product/campaign in front of the public and the press for weeks.
It's female athletes who are among the most distressed by Sweeney's sexualized appearance in the ads. Is it because Sweeney's ad virtually ignores women's sports in the ad? Actually, no. The female athletes are upset because they think Sweeney is giving women's sports a bad name.
Sydney Sweeney is in the ad because she's drop-dead gorgeous. Full stop. End of story. The ad is not aimed at women. It is aimed at young, heterosexual men. A Siena College survey found that 48% of men 18-49 have an active account with at least one online sportsbook.
Across major sportsbooks, wagers on women's sports historically made up a single-digit percentage of total betting handle, but major events command a much larger slice. For example, during the Olympics, 24% of total wagers placed through FanDuel were on women's events.
You will notice that few, if any, sportsbooks use hunky men to advertise. Athletes featured in ads don't attract women. They target men who know them and admire their exploits on the field. That's what makes the opposition to Sweeney so silly.
I think there are two things that account for the confused but anguished response to it. The first of them is Sydney Sweeney herself. She’s an N-of-1, an old-fashioned sex symbol of the highest order. She’s fleshy and provocative like Marilyn Monroe, but instead of Monroe’s projected innocence she has an imperious control of male desire. A woman like that is always going to unsettle the atmosphere, rile women with her power, and excite men with her undeniable appeal. To make matters worse, she is a registered Republican. La belle dame sans merci, with a body that doesn’t stop.
The other reason for the ferociousness of the backlash is more complex, and it expresses itself as bitterness but is really a kind of defeat. No matter how much better women athletes have become and will become, they will always run a distant second to male athletes. It is a truth that is often employed in a bullying way, to diminish and harm, but it is the truth nevertheless. Men are faster, stronger, and bigger than women, and in the places where those differences count—and competitive sports is one of the places where they really count—women’s sports can be admired and championed. But for many people, they can just as easily be forgotten as had happened through this ad.
"A very old dynamic is asserting itself: the pitiless and beautiful woman whose advantages have not been earned, and the hardworking other who has spent a lifetime in training and achievement, self-denial, and effort only to be overlooked when the moment of judgment comes around."
Sweeney may not have had to work at being beautiful (although I will bet that she never goes to a public event without being groomed and made up by experts). But the results of her ad campaigns are without peer. The fact is, female athletes, as good as they are, cannot compete with Sweeney at her level. Women who reach the pinnacle of success through the blood, sweat, and tears of their efforts feel slighted by a sex goddess who only needs to cast a "come hither" stare into the camera to achieve stardom and notoriety.
I'd be resentful, too.
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