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Sydney Sweeney: America’s Most Notorious Becky

Writer: Nd CULTURE
Nd CULTURE
4 minutes ago
4 min read

Published October 16, 2026 at 2:45 AM EDT


Sydney Sweeney ad campaig for Novig. Photos © Novig. All rights reserved.


LOS ANGELES, CA— Sydney Sweeney has accomplished something remarkable: she can sell jeans without wearing much denim and make a sports commercial that gets people debating everything except the score.


Originally from Spokane, Washington, the 29-year-old actress has become a walking argument about sex, race, politics, and who gets to decide what an attractive woman should do with her attractiveness. Conservatives have tried to turn her into a cultural victory. Critics have treated her advertising campaigns like evidence at a congressional hearing. Meanwhile, Sweeney keeps getting photographed.


Somewhere in this national emergency, a company would like you to buy pants.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AK8s3iqL99c
Sydney Sweeney ad campaig for American Eagle. Photos © American Eagle. All rights reserved.

American Eagle’s 2025 “Sydney Sweeney Has Great Jeans” campaign supplied the perfect combustible material. The jeans-and-genes wordplay, paired with a blonde, blue-eyed white actress discussing inherited traits, prompted accusations that the campaign flirted with eugenics. Defenders saw a familiar advertising pun. Critics saw a familiar racial hierarchy dressed in denim.


To be honest, we had never heard of her before the controversy and never watched the show Euphoria or any of the films where she regularly appears nude.


We thought she looked aight, nice curves, but we knew some nonwhite women would voice their displeasure -- just like some of you might be upset that we're even doing a story on her.


The historical baggage behind idealized white beauty has been dissected, overanalyzed, and internalized by nonwhite women for half a century. At some point, the discussion becomes petty: another attractive white woman appears, and somehow she's a threat to nonwhite women.

We see a similar tendency in the resentment directed at Caitlin Clark by some Black lesbian WNBA players, while Sophie Cunningham has attracted her own controversy over sex appeal and conservative politics. There are legitimate arguments about unequal attention and opportunity. But being white, desirable, and popular does not automatically make a woman a Confederate monument.



Sweeney eventually rejected the hateful meanings attached to the campaign. In a December 2025 interview with People, she said people had assigned her motives she did not hold and acknowledged that her silence had helped deepen the division. That clarification matters. So does the distinction between what an actress says and what strangers decide she represents.


Then came Novig.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bp0T184hVY0
Sydney Sweeney ad campaig for Novig. Photos © Novig. All rights reserved.

On September 9, 2026, the sports prediction platform launched “Just Sports,” its first national advertising campaign. Sweeney appears nude or barely clothed, strategically covered by footballs, basketballs, hockey equipment, and other sporting props. The pitch: Novig lets customers trade on sports outcomes rather than politics or celebrity gossip. Sweeney also joined the company as a strategic partner and equity holder. She has a financial stake in the business she is helping promote.


 On October 14, Dodgers outfielder Alex Call urged MLB and its broadcast partners to remove what he called “soft porn ads” from playoff coverage. Responding to a parent’s complaint that included Sweeney’s Novig commercial, Call said he wanted to watch baseball with his son without unexpected sexual imagery appearing between plays.


Call is right. The ad was bit too much, but that was the intention.


Sydney Sweeney ad campaig for Novig. Photos © Novig. All rights reserved.
Sydney Sweeney ad campaig for Novig. Photos © Novig. All rights reserved.

Sweeney appeared to answer the earlier criticism on September 13 by sharing nude photographs of female and male athletes from ESPN’s Body Issue, including Serena Williams, Sue Bird, Megan Rapinoe, and Rob Gronkowski. She did not explain the posts, but the apparent suggestion was that sports and nudity have shared a magazine cover before.


Some might argue that celebrating an athlete’s trained body differs from using a celebrity’s body to sell a service. But wasn't ESPN using pro athletes' nude bodies to sell a magazine?


That seems to be Sweeney's point.


Sydney Sweeney ad campaig for Novig. Photos © Novig. All rights reserved.
Sydney Sweeney ad campaig for Novig. Photos © Novig. All rights reserved.

So does the possibility that a woman can understand exactly what men find attractive and choose to profit from it. You can question the campaign’s taste. You can dislike the product. But calling her empowered only when her choices satisfy your politics makes empowerment sound suspiciously conditional.


We can celebrate Black beauty without pretending beauty stops at the color line. We also refuse to confuse bedding a blonde bombshell with endorsing anybody’s racial hierarchy. White America supplied those ideological assignments.

Our position? We love it. We miss hot chicks in beer commercials and Ford truck ads during timeouts. Sydney Sweeney takes good pictures and has a tight little body with great breasts. What’s not to love—her white skin, blue eyes, and blonde hair? We don’t discriminate. We regulate every shade. But in 15 years, she’ll look like the actress in the Vinted commercial.



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