GEORGIE PARKER: Sydney Sweeney’s sport advertisement is proof that sex sells, but in a man’s world

A friend messaged me about Sydney Sweeney’s controversial new ad yesterday and said, “Jeez, she must have thick skin.”

My response was that her thick skin is a bank account with considerably more zeroes in it than ours. I doubt Sydney Sweeney gives any thought what I think about the campaign, what female athletes think about it, or what the thousands of women criticising her online think either. And when I put my marketing hat on, I understand exactly what she’s doing.

This isn’t an advertisement for women’s sport. It’s using one of the most famous women in the world and her body to sell a sports prediction product to a heavily male audience. It’s provocative, it’s gone viral and I’m sitting in Australia writing about a product that isn’t even available here. From a marketing perspective, job done.

But the former female athlete in me watches it and feels a little sad. Because while this ad isn’t about women’s sport, it reminds me of something female athletes have been fighting against forever: the feeling that being really good at something isn’t always enough.

When I was playing, one of our best players was also one of our most marketable (whatever that means). I remember watching her put on a full face of makeup and a full head of hair extensions in to play every match. I vividly remember one match day it was pouring with rain and mascara was streaming down her face and I thought: you are one of the best players in the world. Why do you have to do this as well?

But I understood why. The beautiful, ‘sexy’ and athletic image she curated helped make her commercially attractive and attract major sponsorships like Red Bull and Nike. The uncomfortable reality was that being an exceptional female athlete didn’t necessarily make you commercially valuable. You often had to look the part too — which she did.

Female athletes have spent decades fighting to be seen as athletes first rather than sex symbols. There was literally an era where women’s American football was marketed as the Lingerie Football League, as though the sport itself wasn’t enough to convince men to watch. Women needed to play it in their underwear it seemed to be given air time.

I genuinely thought we were past that.

It’s also interesting how rarely the same marketing logic is applied in reverse. We don’t routinely see a naked male celebrity draped over a sports product because that’s supposedly the easiest way to convince women to spend money.

There’s something lazy and low-hanging-fruit about the assumption that if you want male eyeballs, show them a beautiful woman’s body. I’d like to think men are better than that. Maybe the success of this campaign suggests otherwise.

But I also find some of the outrage from women uncomfortable.

There are of course the women’s sports faithful who are forever pushing for equality, but over the last couple of days I’ve watched other women furiously sharing posts about how insulting this campaign is to female athletes who I’ve rarely seen post about women’s sports at other times. Almost like it’s just an excuse to get angry and something to give them content.

If we don’t want sport constantly marketed through a male lens, we also need to demonstrate there is another enormous audience worth marketing to.

And increasingly, we are. Women’s sporting audiences, crowds and commercial investment are growing. Advertisers ultimately follow eyeballs and money.

That doesn’t make women responsible for advertising they dislike, nor are women obliged to watch women’s sport because they are women themselves. Sydney Sweeney is also perfectly entitled to use her sexuality however she chooses. She’s an adult woman who has decided where she sits with all of this. I don’t like it and find it in poor taste, but hey, good luck to her.

Outrage, however, isn’t the only vote we have. Buying a ticket is a vote. Watching a game is a vote. Buying merchandise is a vote. Following and engaging in online media is a vote. Every one of those actions makes women harder for the sporting industry to ignore as consumers.

And I’m aware of the irony. I’m annoyed at myself for giving this campaign another column of oxygen when I could be writing about the brilliant female athletes who competed over the weekend. I’m fairly certain Sydney Sweeney’s name will attract more attention than plenty of stories about women actually playing sport.

By writing this, I’m buying into the very thing I’m complaining about. Maybe that’s the best evidence of how well the campaign worked.

I don’t want women to stop being sexy; look good, feel good, play good is a mentality so many athletes swear by. But I want female athletes to be marketable because they’re brilliant athletes, and women to become such an undeniable commercial force in sport that advertisers are desperate to sell to us rather than constantly using women to sell to men.

Because if women were the target market for this campaign, I suspect it would look very different. And I’d quite like to see what that ad looks like.