Why Sydney Sweeney Has Two Big Targets On Her Chest - William Costello

Chris opens by noting the timing: he tends to bring William Costello on when an evolutionary-psychology-informed furor is underway, and the third guest of the day, Sydney Sweeney, has walked into a very large pair of problems.

Before getting into it, he asks Costello to establish his credentials — the Feminist Evolutionary Psychology Society award he won for a conference poster a couple of years ago — and admits he is flagrantly putting those bona fides up front in case they get shouted at today.

The object of the controversy is a sixty-second spot for Novig, a sports betting company adjacent to prediction markets but exclusively for sports. Sweeney appears in it, and Chris proposes they watch it first — for research purposes.

The ad's joke is a rapid-fire inventory of things you can trade. This sport, that sport, this one too. Sports, sports, sports, sports, sports, sports. Then the pivot: you cannot trade this. No betting on wars or deaths, and no politics. Just you, your takes, and sports.

The internet responded in the most predictable way imaginable, and Costello was not surprised by any of it — neither by the accusations of double standards, nor by the claim that the criticism is aimed in the wrong direction.

Costello's read is straightforward. Sweeney has a significant stake in the company, so she wants it to succeed. Sports betting is aimed at young men, because young men are the target market for every sports betting company. She understands the oldest maxim in advertising, that sex sells, and she has backed herself as the face and body of her own brand.

And she is not an ambassador for the company. She is an owner. That matters, because it means she has real skin in the game, an upside, and a justification: she profits from every single one of these.

Then came the backlash. An Irish radio presenter — Costello cannot recall the name — claimed that

she in 40 seconds has set female sport back 40 years

Costello's reaction is that this is a remarkably sexist and low view of women's sport: the implication is that its popularity is so tenuously held that a girl with large breasts can undo it in an advertisement. All undone with cleavage.

It is also absurd given the larger issues actually threatening women's sport, starting with trans athletes. What he finds most interesting is that nobody in this conversation seems to have any trouble identifying who the women in sport are — and that these same commentators were presumably silent on the trans women in sport question.

The New York Times piece supplies the strongest version of the complaint: if any group has genuinely forced a change in the perception of what women are capable of since the turn of the century, of what it means to be a strong and powerful woman, or to be a girl without prostrating to the male gaze, it is women in sport.

Chris calls that a pretty good reply, and then notes how strange it is to watch people suddenly pretend to be offended by risque images. These are people who insisted for years that the full-blown prostitution of women is legitimate and empowering, who adopted countless graphic, sexual female rap and pop songs as anthems. Now a woman in lingerie is setting women back, with not the slightest attempt at consistency.

I thought it was my body my choice.

He expected the first reaction to be exactly that: that empowerment and the sexual revolution were supposed to give women freedom rather than take it away. Most of these commentators are probably pro sex work, pro OnlyFans, and certainly pro female financial independence.

So the modern conception of what a desirable woman is supposed to be is colliding with a rider: not like that. And the permission is conditional on identity. The identical act of self-sexualisation reads as empowering when the right person does it — someone inside the in-group — and becomes a criticism when the person is coded in any way right wing, or simply not sufficiently woke.

What is remarkable is how puritanical and conservative the criticism has been, how sex negative it becomes the moment it is targeted. Put your clothes back on, who do you think you are. Very strange.

Chris tries to build the strongest case for why the ad is bad and finds it hard, because it functions like a Rorschach test he fails. Many of the people with a problem seem to assume Sweeney is saying this is what women's sport is like, rather than this is a gambling app and you should use it, regardless of the gender of the person playing.

The pushback, he says, is really saying something about women's sports rather than about women in gambling. And the women's sports angle does not survive contact with ESPN's history: naked issue after naked issue, Ronda Rousey naked on the cover, Serena or Venus Williams naked on the cover, a blonde woman with a full back piece and a prosthetic limb climbing naked, Megan Rapinoe, an entire lineup — possibly the US women's team, back to back.

What struck Chris hardest is the underlying premise. Women in sport have done everything they can to escape the male gaze — and the male gaze is the only reason anyone is watching. Who is the biggest consumer of women's sport?

who is the biggest consumer of female sports? Men.

By miles, Costello agrees, by miles.

So the steelman has to run differently. You could argue that it is fine for female athletes to self-sexualise: if a byproduct of competing is a very sexy body, they can use it to attract viewers. On that basis you could say Sweeney is trivialising women's sport — or you could say it is plain old tribalism.

But something deeper is happening, and the tell is that she is not pretending to be a sports star. Even granting that she has some of the kit on, the priority of the ad is not her playing sport. It is the gambling.

Apply the same test to a real athlete. LeBron recently did a deal with Polymarket. If it turned out that LeBron was somebody you could bet on, would anyone accuse him of misrepresenting the illustrious community of bettors, of not being sufficiently representative of gambling people?

That is nitpicking, Chris concedes, but it is nitpicking in service of the hypocrisy. The harder question is whether there is any way to quantify the claim at all: is Sweeney damaging the perception of female athletes, or setting them back a hundred years? How would that even happen?

extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence

Instead the claims are made flippantly, and they rest on a low opinion of women's sport and how far it has come.

Costello's counterexample is from home. Katie Taylor, one of Ireland's greatest athletes of all time and one of the best female boxers ever, sold out Croke Park. Her achievements are not undone by Sydney Sweeney. The claim is preposterous.