An promoting marketing campaign that includes American actor Sydney Sweeney has sparked widespread backlash from feminine athletes who say it’s sexualizing ladies in sports activities.
Within the advert for the sports activities prediction market platform Novig, Sweeney seems with little or no clothes, protecting elements of her physique with strategically positioned footballs and different sports activities attire.
Many feminine athletes criticized the advert on social media and referred to as it disrespectful to ladies.
“I can’t describe how infuriated I really feel after I watch this,” four-time Olympic swimming gold medalist Ariarne Titmus wrote on Instagram. “How can we dwell in a world the place monetizing a lady’s physique and sexualizing ladies’s sport remains to be a factor?”
British sprinter Amy Hunt addressed the actor in a post-race interview with the BBC on Sunday after ending fourth within the 200 meters on the Final Championship in Budapest, Hungary.
“Sydney Sweeney, that is what ladies in sport appear to be,” she mentioned, trying on the digital camera. “Muscle mass, arduous work, sweat, blood, tears.”
Former U.S. gymnast Gracie Kramer referred to as the advert infuriating.
“I’ve spent my whole life competing in a sport the place feminine athletes have been oversexualized, decreased to our our bodies, and compelled to struggle to be taken significantly for what we will truly do,” she mentioned on Instagram.
Kramer posted tales that includes feminine athletes coaching with the caption: “What a lady in sports activities appears like.”
Sofie Fella, a Chinese language-German rugby participant, mentioned feminine athletes will be position fashions for women and girls as a result of they handle to “untangle” from society’s beliefs of magnificence and femininity.
“And that’s why that Sydney Sweeney advert is so disrespectful to each feminine athlete on the earth,” she mentioned in an Instagram put up.
Novig didn’t instantly reply an e mail looking for remark. A publicist for Sweeney additionally didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.
In an obvious reference to the criticism, Sweeney over the weekend posted a collection of covers from ESPN The Journal’s “Physique Concern,” an annual particular version that confirmed athletes posing nude or semi-nude in a celebration of the range of our bodies.
Sweeney, a two-time Emmy nominee, starred in and produced final 12 months’s “Christy,” a biopic of American skilled boxer Christy Martin.
This isn’t the primary time her model partnerships have sparked debate; her 2025 American Eagle campaign, which performed on the homophones “denims” and “genes,” beforehand triggered widespread on-line dialogue.
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