Sydney Sweeney's latest ad shows what happens when women's bodies become products

Every time a Sydney Sweeney controversy comes up, especially around an advertisement, I think it cannot get any worse. But somehow, she keeps surprising us all.

Sweeney's new advertisement for sports prediction platform Novig has once again put her at the centre of a debate about the way women are represented. Except this time, the backlash has roared much louder. And for very obvious reasons.

The advertisement talks about “women in sports” while featuring a nude Sweeney using footballs and other sporting equipment to artistically cover her body. And almost instantly, actual women in sports had something to say about it.

The criticism was not simply that Sydney Sweeney was naked. That would be an incredibly reductive way of looking at this controversy. The problem is that an advertisement supposedly built around sports and women in sports chose to sexualise a woman's body as its primary visual language.

Because right from selling soaps made out of her bathwater, to starring in a “jean” advertisement that had her, a blonde, white, blue-eyed woman, talking about having great “jeans” while playing on the word “genes”, to now starring in an overly sexualised advertisement that is supposed to represent women in sports, there seems to be a pattern.

And perhaps the more important question is not whether the Sharp Objects actor is a feminist or whether she considers herself empowered.

What happens when women themselves become double agents for the patriarchy?

The problem with this advertisement is not a woman choosing to own her sensuality or make her own rules for her body. The problem is what happens when that choice is placed inside a system that has historically profited from women's sexualisation.

Women have fought for ages not to be sexualised, objectified and discriminated against. They have fought to be taken seriously for what they can do, rather than what they look like. And women in sports have had to fight this battle particularly hard.

Women are still quite aggressively, and quite sadly so, used as just a prop or seen as an object of desire. They're marketed to the world as eye candy across industries. And this results in women not being taken seriously when it comes to sports, which a patriarchal worldview has long treated as a man's domain.

A woman has to be extraordinary to be taken seriously as an athlete. Whereas most men just have to show up.

Look at what happened to Indian powerlifter Keyaa Banerji recently. After winning a silver medal at the 2026 IPF World Sub Junior and Junior Classic Powerlifting Championships, she spoke out about being sexualised online, fake accounts being created in her name, and AI-generated images being used to manipulate her face and body. Her sporting achievement was soon overshadowed by conversations about her appearance.

A female athlete's body is dissected, discussed and judged before her performance is even considered. Her clothes become news. Her appearance becomes news. Her femininity becomes news. Whether she is too muscular, too thin, too masculine, too feminine, too attractive or not attractive enough becomes part of the conversation.

And then, after decades of women fighting against this, along comes an advertisement that takes the female body and makes it the centrepiece of a sports campaign.

An ad like this does just what is needed to send us all back 100 years.

And it is ironic, considering Sweeney started her career with a small role in the adaptation of Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale. Maybe Sweeney missed the whole point and took the social demotion of women from the series literally.

But the need to call this advertisement, as well as Sydney Sweeney's constant bad choices in women's portrayal, out is crucial at this point.

Often, women knowingly or unknowingly serve as double agents for the patriarchy by selling a narrative that stems from patriarchy.

This is where the debate becomes complicated.

Because how can something be patriarchal when a woman is the one making those choices for herself and not a man? That is precisely what makes it so difficult to call out. The medium being a woman puts the entire debate in a grey area.

We have been taught that empowerment means women having the freedom to make their own choices. And that is absolutely true. Women should have the freedom to dress however they want, pose however they want, be sexual, not be sexual, be feminine, be masculine, or reject all of these definitions altogether.

And this is where Sydney Sweeney becomes a sheep in wolf's clothing.

Because she is a woman, we buy into the idea of this being about reclaiming power. But what if the woman has agency, but the image still serves the male gaze? That is the uncomfortable part of this conversation.

A woman can choose to participate in her own sexualisation. That does not mean the culture of sexualisation suddenly stops existing. The male gaze does not disappear simply because a woman is the one standing in front of the camera. It does not disappear because she agreed to the campaign. It does not disappear because she was paid for it. And it certainly does not disappear because she says she feels empowered by it.

If the visual being sold still presents one very specific kind of female body, one very specific kind of beauty, one very specific set of facial features and one very specific idea of desirability as something worth looking at, then what exactly are we calling empowerment?

Because selling a visual for the male gaze that shows a certain body type, facial features, clothing and sexuality does nothing to empower women.

It makes women question their own bodies. It makes them feel lesser. All because they don't fit into the mould that makes them attractive to the male gaze.

Patriarchy does not always need a man to enforce it. Sometimes it survives because women participate in selling its ideals too. Sometimes knowingly. Sometimes unknowingly. And sometimes because those ideals have become so deeply embedded into our understanding of beauty, femininity, desirability and success that we no longer recognise them as patriarchal at all.

That is the genius of patriarchy. It does not always tell women, “You cannot do this.” Sometimes it tells women, “You are free to do whatever you want,” while simultaneously making sure that the choices most rewarded, most marketed and most celebrated are the ones that continue to serve the same old system.

Because this is not a private decision being made in front of a mirror. It is an advertisement. It is a commercial product using a woman's body to sell something. And when that product is sports, the context becomes even more important.

The women who are actually in sports have spent years trying to move the conversation away from their bodies and towards their ability. They have had to prove that they belong. They have had to prove that their strength is not masculine. They have had to prove that being feminine does not make them weak. They have had to prove that being attractive does not make them less serious. They have had to prove that their bodies are instruments of athleticism, not objects for public consumption.

And then an advertisement comes along and reduces the female body in sport back to something that exists primarily to be looked at.

There is a difference between a woman exercising agency over her body and a commercial industry continuing to profit from the same patriarchal standards that women have spent generations trying to dismantle.

And perhaps that is the biggest problem with the idea of the female “double agent”. We have become so desperate to prove that women have agency that we sometimes stop questioning what that agency is being used to sell.

A woman being in control does not automatically make the message feminist. And a woman selling a patriarchal narrative does not make that narrative any less patriarchal simply because she is the one selling it.

So no, it doesn't matter if you're a woman.

If what you're selling is pushing the ideals of patriarchy forward, you are still contributing to patriarchy. If what you're selling tells women that there is one particular body they should aspire to have, one particular face they should aspire to have, one particular way they should dress and behave to be desirable, then calling that empowerment does not change what the image is doing.

And if you discredit the hours of blood, sweat and tears put in by female athletes to break ages of stigma by making a clearly sexualised advertisement about them, then we have a problem.

Because patriarchy does not always arrive dressed as oppression. Sometimes it arrives dressed as empowerment. Sometimes it arrives with a woman standing confidently in front of the camera. Sometimes it tells us this is liberation.

And sometimes, because the person selling it is a woman, we stop looking closely enough to realise that we are still being sold the same old idea.

That is what makes the double agent so dangerous. Not because she is a woman. But because she makes patriarchy look like freedom.- EndsDisclaimer: Views expressed in this opinion piece are those of the author.Published By: Prachi aryaPublished On: Sep 17, 2026 18:45 ISTALSO READ | Sydney Sweeney strips down for sports ad and internet needs a timeout