Sydney Sweeney Manages to Clear Up the Sports World’s Gender Confusion

A ctress and model Sydney Sweeney posed nude with sports equipment for a sports-betting site. Female athletes, along with feminists and the media, are furious — but now, they suddenly understand who really qualifies as a “woman in sports.”

The Associated Press ran the headline, “Female athletes accuse Sydney Sweeney ad of sexualizing women in sports.” Forbes published a story titled, “Why Female Athletes Are Fighting Back Against Sydney Sweeney’s New Ad.” (But how do we know they’re female athletes? I thought we just had no way of telling, and asking someone for their chromosomes would be unforgivably invasive?)

The athletes have launched an informal social-media campaign, where they post videos of themselves competing, then add a caption along the lines of “this is a real woman in sports.” Some of the women apparently decided it made sense to push back against the “sexualization” of female athletes by posting footage of them training in the gym, wearing nothing but ultra-tight shorts and a bra. A number of accomplished professional female athletes have perceived Sweeney’s ad as an attack. Ariarne Titmus, a four-time Olympic swimming gold medalist for Australia, described the ad as “a kick in the face” and further asked: “How do we live in a world where monetizing a woman’s body and sexualizing women’s sport is still a thing?” (Competing in professional women’s sports is also “monetizing a women’s body,” while “sexualizing women” will always be a thing because men exist and sex sells.)

The activism is occurring in the arena, too. British sprinter Amy Hunt told BBC Sport during a post-race interview, “Sydney Sweeney, this is what women in sport look like. Muscles, hard work, sweat, blood, tears.” During a recent television interview about the Sweeney ad, Hunt emphasized that “when we’re trying to provide role models for young people and young women in sport, we really want to show that it’s about what your body can do, not so much what it looks like . . . you don’t have to worry about what you’re wearing.” (About a month ago, Hunt defended her love for “glam,” saying that “looking good and feeling good” helps her perform well. She showed off her sparkly nails, stating that “It’s a show at the end of the day.”)

This is yet another instance where obvious things have to be explained very slowly in excruciating detail to women: The advertisement is designed to appeal to male base instincts and encourage them to gamble more money. Since the website is dedicated to spending money on sports, the gimmick is that she’s holding footballs and hockey sticks and other sporty stuff. That’s it. It isn’t that deep. She isn’t being called an athlete, and she isn’t being honored for any sporting achievement.

I suspect that all these women actually know as much, but they’ll seize any opportunity to criticize a woman who is hotter than they are. What all the female athletes really want to say is, “Look at me, not Sydney.” But these women don’t want to concede the fact that Sweeney is undeniably attractive, nor do they want to acknowledge the clear fact that most men would rather be teased by a hot woman than watch a toned woman jump really high or run really fast. Instead of just admitting — to themselves and to the public — that women’s sports just don’t win in the world of entertainment, female athletes resort to moral shaming. Of course, there wouldn’t be endless complaining if an ugly female athlete made the same advertisement; instead, we’d only hear jokes and insults.

The selective political outrage is such striking hypocrisy. Female athletes have been largely silent in response to males entering women’s divisions, snatching trophies, seizing scholarship opportunities, and even severely injuring fellow competitors. The theoretical social harm that Sweeney is facilitating against female athletes is somehow more deserving of condemnation than the policies and male athletes that have obviously harmed women and girls. But at the very least, Sweeney has apparently prompted a worldwide agreement that “women in sports” should be women.

I don’t like lewdness in the public square, and certainly not in online advertisements that children might see. As a result, I dislike the ad. But I am more annoyed by narcissistic women inventing and discarding principles to signal superior moral standing in society, then proceeding to bash anyone who disagrees with them without setting forth any actual argument. The funnier form of hypocrisy is that some women will whine about “sexualization” in the caption beneath a video zooming in on their rear end in skimpy shorts during a round of squats.