Sydney Sweeney and the Fruit of Feminism

It takes a very singular, and a very dark, moment in history to be grateful for encountering the Chestertonian proposal that it is better to believe in the wrong thing than in nothing at all.

Those words play out in strange and sometimes stunning moments in this day of unimaginable topsy-turvydom, when the madness of relativism catches whole crowds of people—suddenly caught in corners of contradiction that they have painted themselves into with pomp and circumstance. The ironies of post-Christian error are rich in impoverished ages, and for faithful Catholics, they can be moments of rueful clarity and vindication.

The controversy blazing in memes and message boards regarding the recent ad for Novig, a sports “trading” app (a euphemism for gambling), featuring the well-endowed blonde-bombshell actress Sydney Sweeney, takes the zeitgeist temperature nicely. In the ad, Sweeney appears nude using various athletic paraphernalia to barely cover her womanhood. It is sleazy, to say the least. And the reaction is fascinating, even if morbid.

Those who occasion the gutter may recall a similar controversy caused by Sweeney a year ago, when she appeared in a series of ads for American Eagle to promote jeans. They were lingering, slinky, and just raunchy enough to turn the collective head à la Linda Blair. Especially pounced upon was the pun, “Sydney Sweeney has great jeans,” sparking a fireball of white supremacy outcries and eugenics naysayers. How dare she use her perfect body to be so backward? We can forget the eugenics of Margaret Sanger when we have Syndey Sweeney’s Nazi jeans to burn.

Sweeney’s at it again—this time as a shareholder—and one who has figured out the ridiculous power that outrage marketing and the viral video have over any advertising campaign. Sydney Sweeney is shameless and laughing shamelessly all the way to the bank as the masses tear themselves to shreds in the most ironic and incredible fashion.

The loudest group decrying the betting ad have been female athletes, who are claiming in angry posts and podcasts that the imagery of a naked woman posing with sports equipment is an unacceptable sexualization of who they are. It is to be supposed that everyone is to overlook the sexualized characters of every walk of life in countless films, Halloween costumes, and porn sites. For some reason, the sexualization and self-exploitation on Instagram and OnlyFans is brave and celebratory, but this sexualization is evil. ESPN and Sports Illustrated have featured many a nude athlete and model, but for some reason, this display by Sweeney is totally outrageous—and making people lose their minds.

Female athletes have far bigger battles to fight than Sweeney’s sexual stunt—such as men posing as women competing against women in sporting events. But, in the name of their idol of insanity, they canceled athletes like Sophie Cunningham and Riley Gaines who took a stand for women’s sports against transgender competitors. The Novig ad is a promotion of porn culture—not a commentary on women’s sports culture.

Instead of attacking the slutty Sydney Sweeney, they should use their voices to denounce the psychotic Lindsay Clancy who premeditatedly murdered her three young children. These are the anathema to womanhood and female dignity. Sydney Sweeney and her indecent exposures should not be so high on the list of what women, be they athletes or not, should find offensive.

The hypocrisy at play here is so off-kilter it’s difficult to know where to begin in pinpointing its cause and origin. To begin with, the ad isn’t purporting that Sweeney is an athlete, and the product she is promoting isn’t women’s sports but a betting app. So, what to make of this indignation? Before making some effort to understand, the gross ironies of this moment are the first things to acknowledge loud and clear: firstly, the irony of feminists who condemn it, and secondly, the irony of conservatives who applaud it.

To all the feminists bewailing this moment, Sydney Sweeney’s actions are nothing more than the fruit of feminism—and it is actually degrading to women. This is sexual liberation taken to its natural conclusion (and doubly ironic, it’s not unappealing to the “manosphere”). It is by feminist mandate that women may pose nude and dispose of their bodies and their image as they see fit. Sydney Sweeney is feminism in the flesh.

Her ad doesn’t, as has been shouted from the rooftops, “set feminism back” however many years. It is feminism across the finish line, which asserts that women can do whatever they want—but not this, apparently. Is the sisterhood being betrayed here? My body my choice, after all. Sweeney holds agency and equity in this “service,” and she should be praised and not pummeled, according to their own principles.

On the conservative side, many are saying with a hand-wave (and a salacious smirk) that this is just good old-fashioned Americana advertising with pretty girls and the age-old wisdom that sex sells, and everyone should get over themselves. It is almost as though the Right wants to embrace it given the Left’s outrage. Though some hold out on the moral problem of objectification, this smug acceptance overlooks the strategic meat hook piercing the intersection of addictions to pornography and gambling.

There’s nothing conservative about this sort of manipulative obscenity, except that such sins are as old as the hills. It certainly doesn’t conserve any value or virtue. Rather, it corrupts according to tradition, giving men an avenue for the proverbial male gaze only to peddle and push a pastime (be it gambling or pornography) that often leads men morally and mortally astray.

These reactions are obfuscations—something to say at something intrinsically objectionable when they have cut their own legs out from under them regarding such objections. If truth is relative and sex is empowering, then there’s nothing to say here against Sweeney. But there is, and everyone knows it.

However, the world has forbidden themselves the truth of why it is objectionable, having freed themselves of the natural moral law that is so taboo it is practically an unknown in a society that worships the self as it does. Yet, when they see such low objectification—this sellout to sell a product—there is still something that the soul cries out against.

Female empowerment, the celebration of bodies and body positivity, is all the rage; but the real rage seems reserved for Sydney Sweeney for some reason—perhaps because she’s brazen and ogled over; perhaps because she triggers the sisterhood; perhaps because she’s a Republican MAGA Barbie. There is no solid reason that anyone can apply with any certainty over certain lunacy, self-contradiction, and visceral suspicion.

Then there’s a kind of Catholic reaction (which I had, as a happily married Catholic man who, I hope, is not too jaded) which may be insupportable by some. This is where the Chestertonian concept that it is better to believe in the wrong thing than in nothing at all comes in. I sense there is something terribly and, as I said, ruefully refreshing about the liberal hordes recoiling from Sydney Sweeney’s for-profit sexuality, problematic as it is in itself. Insofar as they regard it as a wild regression from the woke progressivism they foist, there is something almost, dare I say, encouraging about this whole ugly situation.

Though undeniably sinful, there are “purer” sins at hand here than the androgynous, transgenderist, metrosexual, low-testosterone slop that is dourly forced as daily fare. That a beautiful, blonde, white woman is seen as repulsive, while hailed by others lost in their own way, is something to at least take good note of. Much of the Right enjoys the Sweeney scandal (and Catholics might, too, in a measured way) because it is anti-Kardashian. Normal people with half a brain are done with the Lauren Sanchez’s of the world—and the world doesn’t approve because it signals a reset.

We’ve hit a point of hyperreality for women, which may be worse for women than hyper-sexualization. Sydney Sweeney is not injected up or surgically enhanced. She is a natural beauty—and that makes the girl next door Hitler and a hater. And that is, again at the very least, a point of interest and perhaps some sliver of hope, as tragic as the matter is for her soul and the souls of those who are ensnared by her unconscionable desecration of womanhood.

I say all this with Catholic caution and the hope of being understood. Better to believe in something than in nothing at all, as so many do. These reactions conjure up ghosts of a time long past—when sin was more real even in its scarlet hues, in the days of old-fashioned fornication instead of the fake, plastic bubble of personal porn. People are so confused, they hardly know how to sin anymore.

With every desire to end on a clear note, let us recall that the Venerable Fulton J. Sheen, whose beatification is scheduled for this month, said that the first characteristic in diabolical activity is a love of nudity. The devils are running amuck in our midst. The Sydney Sweeney ad is a terrible sign of diabolical times, when nudity is normal for those who have fallen from that nakedness which is normal no more. Though the reactions are confirming of the truth which Catholics hold firm to, there may be something darkly promising in the outrage over the fruit of feminism.