In under two years, Sydney Sweeney has found herself at the center of two campaign-related controversies connected to American Eagle and her own SYRN line.
The “Housemaid” actress has been accused of promoting white supremacy and eugenics slogans, including phrases like “Sydney Sweeney has great jeans.”
In January, she drew heat after scaling the Hollywood sign and tossing her intimate apparel atop it.
The FilmLA film office stated that Sweeney had permission to shoot near the landmark, but not to touch or ascend it.
Yet stirring up controversy might be her favorite pastime. And this occasion, she hoped that comparing herself to icons like Serena Williams would quell the backlash.
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Recently, the sports-betting platform Novig released a commercial featuring Sweeney in the nude, wearing nothing but a assortment of athletic gear.
Online uproar followed, and on Sept. 13, Sweeney issued a nonverbal response that loudly highlighted the hypocrisy.
Sweeney posted photographs of Williams and other professional athletes posing unclothed for ESPN’s Body Issue, drawing parallels to her Novig spot. The covers also showcased Jason Kelce, Karl-Anthony Towns, and Megan Rapinoe.
ESPN’s Body Issue began in 2009 with a mission “to celebrate the incredible power of the athletic form,” according to their site.
Further down the page, it reads, “It’s inspired a deeper appreciation for what our bodies are capable of, the power they possess, the flaws they force us to accept, what they can overcome and where they can take us.”
In a separate turn-the-other-cheek response, Sweeney followed up on Instagram with still images from the Novig campaign.
In the first ten-slide post, the “Housemaid” actress perched on her heels and pressed two footballs against her bare chest.
In another image, Sweeney used a basketball to support her lower back as she reclined and concealed her chest with her arms. The left side of her rear, along with her legs and abdomen, remained fully visible.
One slide featured a clip of her wearing Novig boxers while holding a football to her chest.
As the camera moved closer to her face, the actress gazed into the lens and uttered, “It’s gamedayyy.” She repeated the phrase in the caption before tagging Novig.
The photographs come from her “Just Sports” collaboration with Novig. In the commercial, she posed completely nude while spinning a basketball on a single finger in one sequence.
In another scene, she wore only football shoulder pads while using a football to cover her groin. The montage adhered to this cheeky motif throughout.
Several women athletes pushed back with their own sports videos, accusing Sweeney’s campaign of conveying the wrong message about women in sports.
A number of female athletes launched their own movement, sharing videos of themselves performing their sports, and in the captions, they name-dropped Sweeney for sexualizing women in athletics.
NCAA champion and three-time All-American gymnast Gracie Kramer criticized Sweeney and her campaign with a video of her routines.
“IDK what Sydney Sweeney was doing, but this is what a woman in sports looks like,” she wrote over the Instagram clip. She doubled down in her caption, adding “because it really is that deep.”
Two-time water polo Olympian Tilly Kearns made a similar post, uploading a short reel of her highlights in the sport.
“I absolutely fing hate Sydney Sweeney’s new sports ad,” Kearns wrote in the video’s caption. “Like what are we doing … so much worse than I imagined too. Here’s some real women sports content.”
2026 Olympian skier Cassidy Gray, Olympian track and field star Bree Masters, British runner Amy Hunt, and more shared comparable messages publicly.
Fans in Sweeney’s comments further criticized her response, calling it “a total disappointment.”
Others termed it “So offensive on so many levels” and accused her of craving attention.
“Have you ever heard of wearing clothes?” one commenter asked, while another added, “Yikes.”
The comparison falls flat because Williams’ ESPN Body Issue photos served a distinct purpose.
Pointing out the irony, one observer said, “Yeah, Serena Williams was No. 1 in women’s tennis and posed like that for a sports magazine. Sydney Sweeney does nothing and promotes a sports-betting platform; isn’t that basically the same thing?”
Another remarked, “Do you genuinely think this ad will change our minds about a Serena Williams match?”
Williams did not use the 2013 shoot to incite controversy or turn a risqué campaign into a spectacle. The tennis icon presented her athletic body as a source of strength, discipline, and pride. She was eight months pregnant with her first child in those photographs.
Sweeney, meanwhile, leaned into the provocative discourse surrounding her film roles. Fans perceived Williams’ post as an effort to justify the ad rather than address the backlash directly.
For now, Sweeney has cemented her brand. Her breakout performance in “Euphoria” included at least one scene each season in which she shed her clothes and revealed herself.
That buzz carried over into the entrepreneurial sphere when she launched her lingerie line SYRN, placing herself at the forefront as the primary model. The line’s bold imagery demonstrated that not all backlash was fatal, as it sold out within hours of its debut.
Sydney Sweeney has faced backlash from female athletes over her nearly nude ad for a sports prediction market
She responded by sharing images of athletes who have posed nude pic.twitter.com/jQprd4SIhm— Dexerto (@Dexerto) September 14, 2026
