American actress Sydney Sweeney broke the silence after the controversy generated by her most recent commercial for Novig, a sports betting platform in which she is a shareholder.
In the controversial advertisement, the 29-year-old appears posing without clothes and covering her body with clothes from various sports disciplines.
In the face of the indignation of social media users and professional athletes, Sweeney went out in defense of the project. The actress decided to publish a series of Intagram stories in which she sees women and men, professional athletes, posing naked on the cover of the US magazine ESPN.
However, the reactions of the protagonist of “Anyone but You” failed to stifle the signals from the female sports sector. Several high-performance athletes appealed to social media to express their discontent, accusing the production of promoting the hypersexualization of women in the sport and of reducing years of struggle for the recognition of athletic effort to a mere object of visual entertainment.
Athletes such as Olympic waterpolist Tilly Kearns and speedster Bree Masters reacted by publishing images of their real competitions to show the difference between elite sports performance and commercial performance.
Although the vast majority of interactions on networks questioned the advertising approach, opinions in favour of Sweeney also emerged. Some advocates highlighted the actress’s autonomy to decide how to present her body and make her own professional decisions.
This new controversy adds to other recent projects in which Sweeney has resorted to the use of her image and nakedness as a marketing strategy for her brands and business alliances.
