An advertising campaign featuring American actor Sydney Sweeney has sparked widespread backlash from female athletes who say it is sexualizing women in sports.
British sprinter Amy Hunt addressed the actor in a post-race interview with the BBC on Sunday after finishing fourth in the 200 meters at the Ultimate Championship in Budapest, Hungary. In the ad for the sports prediction market platform Novig, Sweeney appears with little or no clothing, covering parts of her body with strategically placed footballs and other sports apparel. “Muscles, hard work, sweat, blood, tears.
“Sydney Sweeney, this is what women in sport look like,” she said, looking at the camera. “I’ve spent my entire life competing in a sport where female athletes have been oversexualized, reduced to our bodies, and forced to fight to be taken seriously for what we can actually do,” she said on Instagram. Sofie Fella, a Chinese-German rugby player, said female athletes can be role models for girls and women because they manage to “untangle” from society’s ideals of beauty and femininity. “And that’s why that Sydney Sweeney ad is so disrespectful to every female athlete in the world,” she said in an Instagram post.
