Column: It's a fact of nature that sex sells in advertising
Sydney Sweeney has had a difficult time and all because she was deemed too sexy. I know exactly how she feels, says writer and comedian Steve N Allen.
The actress appeared in an advert for Novig, an American sports betting company. In it she is wearing very little and uses various bits of sports equipment to cover herself. Who hasn’t used sports stuff to hide their blushes.
The fact that, for some of us, a pack of darts is enough is neither here nor there.
The backlash included female athletes who were angry at how they were being represented. British sprinter Amy Hunt told Sydney Sweeney: “This is what women in sport look like,” before talking about muscles, hard work, sweat, blood and tears.
Olympic swimmer Ariarne Titmus described the advert as a “kick in the face” to women who have dedicated their lives to sport.
I think they’re angry with the wrong bit of it. Sydney Sweeney isn’t trying to be a sportswoman in the advert. She is a woman in an advert and she looks exactly like many women in adverts look. Even the bunny in the Cadbury Caramel advert was hot. No one claimed she was setting unrealistic body standards for pets.
Sex sells and adverts try to sell things. That’s why we have had perfume adverts that are so busy showing hot people they forget to show the perfume. We have aftershave adverts where a man sprays himself and suddenly every woman in Europe wants to climb through his bedroom window. It’s not nice but it is a fact of human nature.
She wasn’t even wearing some of the sports kit. She was holding it over her untanned bits. I’m no expert in basketball but I don’t think, if you are a serious player, you sit naked on the hoop.
It’s worth remembering that the advert was selling sports betting, which is not a subcategory of sport. It is a subcategory of betting. In theory, we should be upset that Sydney was causing the objectification of bookmakers.
The sportswomen have fought hard not to be reduced to their appearance.
That is true. But Sydney Sweeney is not representing them any more than the woman in the Scottish Widows adverts represents hedge fund managers.
She invested in the betting company Novig before all this. I don’t know how successful the advert has been where it has been shown as an advert, but thanks to Sydney, it has been talked about across the media.
And if the point of the advert was to get into the news, then Sydney Sweeney certainly scored a goal.