Opinion: Opinion | Sydney Sweeney And The Obsession With Asking Sportswomen To 'Take The Clothes Off'

There is a particular kind of feminism that I find increasingly exhausting. It arrives wearing the language of empowerment, carries a hashtag, flashes a beautiful woman's body at the camera, and then expects us to applaud because, apparently, 'her body, her choice'.

Yes. Her body. Her choice. But whose story? That is the question Sydney Sweeney's new Novig advertisement has made impossible to ignore.

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The actor appears in various stages of undress, using sporting equipment to cover her body as she performs or mimics a range of sports while promoting Novig, a sports prediction company in which Sweeney is also an equity holder and strategic partner. The campaign has been criticised by Olympic and elite sportswomen, who argue that it sexualises women's sport and trivialises the years of physical labour that female athletes put into their disciplines. Four-time Olympic gold medallist Ariarne Titmus called it a "kick in the face" to women who have spent their lives perfecting their craft. Sprinter Amy Hunt put it even more brutally: "This is what women in sport look like?" No. It's about hard work. Blood. Sweat. Tears.

And frankly, I understand their fury. Because this is not an argument about whether Sydney Sweeney is allowed to take her clothes off. It's about us women being tired of the trope that leads us to believe that every time a woman takes her clothes off, feminism has won. Because apparently, if a woman is naked by choice, we are not allowed to ask what is being sold around her, who is profiting from her body, or whether her sexuality has been lazily substituted for an actual idea.

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So let me say this plainly: Sydney Sweeney can do whatever she wants with her body. She can pose naked. She can be sexy. She can sell lingerie. She can make provocative art. She can sit on a basketball hoop wearing nothing but a strategically placed ball.

Her body. Her choice.

But when that naked body becomes the centrepiece of an advertisement supposedly about sport, I reserve the right to ask: what is this saying about sportswomen?

Now imagine, just for a moment, doing this in India. Imagine taking Smriti Mandhana, Jemimah Rodrigues, or Manu Bhaker - the women who are currently making Indian sport cool, aspirational, and commercially irresistible - and saying, 'forget the glorious runs, the well-earned medals, the hard training, the years of discipline. Let's put an actress in a skimpy outfit, hand her a cricket bat or a pistol, and call it women's sport!'

Absurd right? That is precisely the absurdity athletes are objecting to. Can we really call this empowering? Can we say, "Well, she is a woman, and she chose to do it, so shut up"? Of course not.

Because PT Usha didn't spend decades becoming one of India's greatest athletes so that an actress could wear her sport as a sexy costume. Mary Kom didn't train through poverty, motherhood, injury, and prejudice to become a prop for somebody's advertising brainstorm. Sania Mirza did not change the economics and visibility of Indian women's tennis so that her racket could become a convenient excuse for cleavage. And PV Sindhu did not win Olympic medals so that badminton could be made "sexy".

In fact, badminton has already tried this nonsense. And lost. In 2011, the Badminton World Federation proposed making skirts or dresses compulsory for women players in major tournaments because it wanted women to look more "feminine" and make the sport more attractive to fans and sponsors. The proposal was condemned as an attempt to "sex up" the sport, and eventually abandoned after widespread opposition. Indian players, including Jwala Gutta, Ashwini Ponnappa, Aparna Popat, and Saina Nehwal, were among those who spoke about the issue.

Think about that sentence: make women athletes look more attractive so men will watch. Apparently, we have learnt nothing. Because the problem isn't that women are attractive. The problem is when attractiveness becomes the product and athleticism becomes the packaging.

And this isn't a new advertising disease. In 2011, the WTA launched its "Strong Is Beautiful" campaign, featuring stars including Serena Williams, Kim Clijsters, and Victoria Azarenka. Some of the imagery was genuinely powerful; some was criticised for turning female athleticism into another opportunity to sexualise the athletes. One campaign shot literally framed Azarenka's body from crotch to chest while she talked about hitting hard.

That same year, the LPGA's advertising featured golfer Natalie Gulbis - despite her being ranked outside the world's top 100 - while the WNBA was criticised for disproportionately promoting its more conventionally attractive players.

And then there was Adidas in 2022. To promote its sports-bra collection, Adidas tweeted a grid of naked women's breasts - 25 sets of them, in different shapes, sizes, and colours. The intention was supposedly body diversity and normalisation. The UK's Advertising Standards Authority subsequently banned the campaign in untargeted advertising, saying the explicit nudity was inappropriate and likely to cause widespread offence. You can argue that Adidas had a legitimate point about body diversity. But that is precisely the problem with modern advertising.

Give objectification a feminist hashtag, and suddenly, nobody is allowed to question it.

Women are being sold objectification and told it's liberation. And sometimes women are the ones selling it to us. That is the uncomfortable conversation we need to have. Patriarchy has trained us to compete for the one currency it has historically offered women: male attention. Be beautiful. Be sexy. Be desirable. Be feminine. Be powerful - but preferably in a way that remains aesthetically pleasing. And then call the whole thing 'empowerment'.

No. I want more from feminism. I want a girl watching Smriti Mandhana to think: I want her confidence. Not: I want her body. I want her to see Jemimah Rodrigues and think: I want that fearlessness. I want her to see Manu Bhaker and think: I want that focus. I want her to see Nikhat Zareen and think: I want that fight. I want her to see Shafali Verma and think: I want to hit that hard. And above all, I want her to see any of these women and think: I want to be that bloody good.

That is what the next generation of girls deserves from women's sport, not another lesson in how to be looked at, but a masterclass in what a woman can do.

That is the revolution.

And Indian advertising has actually shown us how to do it. Nike India's "Da Da Ding" campaign before the Rio Olympics did something wonderfully radical: it put Indian sportswomen at the centre - PV Sindhu, Dutee Chand, Mary Kom, and others - showing them boxing, sprinting, swimming, and playing football. No tortured explanations about why women deserve to be there. No male gaze disguised as empowerment. Just women being phenomenal.

That is what sports advertising can look like. Women doing sport because they are athletes. Not actresses impersonating athletes because the camera likes their bodies better.

And let's be clear: I am not asking women athletes to become sexless saints. If Smriti Mandhana wants to wear a bikini, good for her. If Jemimah Rodrigues wants to turn up at a fashion shoot in a gown, fabulous. If Manu Bhaker wants to pose for a fashion magazine, I hope they give her the cover. If Shafali Verma wants to wear whatever the hell she wants, she should. And if any of these athletes - or any woman athlete - wants to pose nude, that too is her choice. The issue is not women's bodies. The issue is what we are selling through them.

There is a world of difference between an athlete choosing to be sexy and an advertiser deciding that sex is the most interesting thing about an athlete. One is agency. The other is lazy marketing. That distinction matters.

Because women's sport has already fought so damn hard to be taken seriously. Women have had to prove they can run faster, jump higher, hit harder, endure longer - and then prove that their competitions are worth your attention. They have been paid less. Shown less. Sponsored less. Broadcast less. And now, just when women's sport is finally becoming commercially powerful, some advertising genius appears to think the answer is: take the clothes off.

What an imaginative leap backwards.

So no, Sydney Sweeney's body is not the problem. The problem is that when advertisers think of women's sport, a woman's body is still apparently the first thing they can think of selling. That is not edgy. It is not feminist. It is not revolutionary. It is just lazy.

Because I don't want another woman pretending to play sport while an audience stares at her body. I want the woman who actually plays the sport. Give me the scars. Give me the sweat. Give me the bad hair. Give me the bruises. Give me the period cramps. Give me the failed attempt. Give me the comeback. Give me the medal. And yes, give me the woman. The whole damn person. 

(Meghna Pant is an award-winning author, journalist, and speaker whose books have been widely acclaimed and are being adapted for the screen)