{"id":628416,"date":"2026-09-18T10:00:14","date_gmt":"2026-09-18T10:00:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/628416\/"},"modified":"2026-09-18T10:00:14","modified_gmt":"2026-09-18T10:00:14","slug":"sydney-sweeneys-cartoonish-provocation-has-sparked-a-culture-war-but-lets-just-admit-sport-can-be-sexy-sport","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/628416\/","title":{"rendered":"Sydney Sweeney\u2019s cartoonish provocation has sparked a culture war but let\u2019s just admit sport can be sexy | Sport"},"content":{"rendered":"

Have you seen the 40-second video that will change the way you think about women\u2019s sport, women\u2019s bodies, just, you know, women? It\u2019s been unavoidable on social media this week \u2013 brazen, unapologetic, dominating the algorithm like an AI kitten hacking a banana-bread recipe while lip-syncing to Cardi B. I for one have enjoyed it at least 50 times already.<\/p>\n

It starts with some carefully curated passive-aggression \u2013 \u201cDear Sydney\u201d, \u201cHey Sydney\u201d, \u201cRespectfully Sydney\u201d \u2013 and follows up with clips of what, in its own words, \u201ca woman in sport actually looks like\u201d. It shows its subject pounding the treadmill or powering down the back straight, flooring a rival with a tackle or a roundhouse kick, lifting weights or throwing herself through the air. It is, inevitably, soundtracked by Dua Lipa. Training Season is getting a serious bump this week.<\/p>\n

The almighty backlash<\/a> to the Novig advert that everyone would rather not have talked about at all has generated more montages than we\u2019ve seen since Rocky IV. My own feed is swamped with inspo-insta reels from grassroots and elite athletes alike. Some might argue it\u2019s the best thing to happen to women\u2019s sport this week \u2013 unless, you know, they\u2019re the European Solheim Cup team<\/a>. Either way, a positively cartoonish piece of provocation lit the five-second fuse to the powder-keg stamped CULTURE WAR, and the resultant explosion has enveloped us all in its cloud of colourful outrage and content confetti.<\/p>\n

The noisy reaction to an actor posing almost naked with various items of sporting equipment demonstrates the power and importance of solidarity within women\u2019s sport. For decades, being a woman in an incorrigibly sexist sector left you one of two responses. Either you ignored uncomfortable and demeaning situations so you could just get on with the thing you wanted to be doing, or you spoke out, braving either devastating indifference or a cacophony of scorn. These days, we\u2019re privileged to have a far louder voice, and for it to be taken seriously.<\/p>\n

There is, however, a danger in taking every piece of deliberate provocation too seriously. And the danger is that it robs us of some of the delight of the thing we love in the first place. Instead of spending this week talking about Lottie Woad\u2019s singles match in the Netherlands, or Chelsea\u2019s 5-0 demolition of Manchester United in the WSL, we\u2019ve surrendered billboards\u2019 worth of brain space to an American celebrity who hasn\u2019t even invested in a Premier League club yet.<\/p>\n

Personally I have also, as discussed, spent quite a lot of time scrolling other people\u2019s highlights reels, and I won\u2019t lie that they got me pretty pumped, but then that was very much their goal. From spiralling gymnastic tumbles to grunting deadlifts, all these women look fire. Even a unitedly earnest effort to remind us that sport is about effort and sweat and inclusivity can\u2019t and shouldn\u2019t hide the fact that it\u2019s also, thrillingly, about human bodies and the gloriously impressive things they can be honed to do.<\/p>\n

Amy Hunt has led the backlash against Sydney Sweeney\u2019s controversial betting advert by telling the US actress that \u2018this is what women in sport look like\u2019. Photograph: Martin Rickett\/PA<\/p>\n

Having to argue that sportswomen aren\u2019t sexual objects, on the other hand, feels as dated as the advert. Part of the problem of the ad is its almost comically regressive throwback to the era of Page 3 girls and 1980s erotica \u2013 the kind of aesthetic we now knowingly indulge within the safe confines of a Jilly Cooper TV adaptation. If we\u2019re jumping this far back in the timeline, will we have to revisit, too, whether it\u2019s appropriate to wear make-up on track, or skorts on court, or any other of the subsidiary arguments that determine how sexy or not a female athlete is required \u2013 or allowed \u2013 to be?<\/p>\n

Or can we unclench and leave them in the past where they belong? Might we even skip a bit further into a more confident future and say out loud the thing that we have always had to be extremely careful expressing? Which is that sport is a primarily physical pursuit that tends to turn the people at its apex into magnificent specimens of humanity. And that those aesthetics are a part of what makes it appealing in the first place.<\/p>\n

The bulging neck on the rugby pitch and the rock-hard calves on the marathon runner have a functional purpose, as opposed to the fantasy one that prompts today\u2019s Hollywood actors to get superhero-buff. But that doesn\u2019t mean we\u2019re not allowed to admire them. Sport is an environment that invites us to witness and thrill to the power and grace of the human body. It\u2019s not only our tribal allegiances and the dopamine hit of vicarious victory that we\u2019re indulging when we marvel at our sporting heroes: it\u2019s also our appreciation of their physical attributes, whether that\u2019s Rafael Nadal\u2019s arms or Jessica Ennis-Hill\u2019s abs or Serena Williams\u2019s everything.<\/p>\n

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And sometimes, when those attributes are in motion, sport can be sexy. Not in the ball-cradling way that Sydney Sweeney\u2019s performance allows delusional men to believe. But in a way that nevertheless holds hostage to the eye and makes the pulse race. It\u2019s rather absurd \u2013 and a little self-deluding \u2013 for sports fans to pretend either to ourselves or others that we don\u2019t find some of our heroes pretty attractive.<\/p>\n

And no, as Amy Hunt so properly pointed out in her own clapback to the Sweeney ad, being an athlete is \u201cnot sexy all the time\u201d. If anyone needed proof, the second most notorious viral video of this week was, in fact, a Hyrox competitor soiling herself<\/a> as she powered to victory. There has, in other words, been plenty of crap circulating on the internet this week. The sanest choice is to avert our eyes.<\/p>\n

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters<\/a> section, please click here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Have you seen the 40-second video that will change the way you think about women\u2019s sport, women\u2019s bodies,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":628417,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":["post-628416","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/628416","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=628416"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/628416\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/628417"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=628416"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=628416"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=628416"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}