Sydney Sweeney has lost 200,000 followers. The culprit, her ad in the nude

You’d say this whole “fall of the influencers” thing is a global phenomenon: the worse we live, the worse these people who tell us how to live our lives from a yacht or while vacationing in the Dominican Republic rub us the wrong way. But it goes beyond Internet celebrities and has spread to the old-school ones too: Sydney Sweeney, who starred in one of the most controversial ads of all time by appearing naked to promote sports betting, has just lost followers in droves. And rightly so.

Instagram Download

A bet that went wrong

For someone like Sweeney, who has 25.8 million followers on Instagram, a little over 200,000 is nothing, but it’s still news and a brutal drop. That said, the ads in question, where she promotes Novig, one of those sports prediction and betting companies that are so popular in the United States (and that have dragged millions of people into ruin), already have 3.5 million “Likes” on Instagram alone, where the actress can be seen covering her private parts with balls or in shots that imply more than they show. Yikes.

Of course, the campaign has been seen for what it is: a sexist objectification of women that wipes out everything women’s sport has achieved over the years, centering it once again on a single thing. That is, the body, nudity, breasts, that kind of thing that gets the most reactionary sectors of society, the ones Sweeney has made pretty obvious nods to over the years, nudging each other (does the “Sydney Sweeney has good jeans” ad ring a bell?). Now she has enemies she didn’t have before, but also more zeroes in her bank account than before. Looks like it paid off.

Sweeney hasn’t responded to the Olympic athletes who have complained about the ad, like Ariarne Titmus, a four-time swimming champion who asks “How do we live in a world where monetizing a woman’s body and sexualizing women’s sport is still something that happens?”. The actress has simply replied that she thought the idea was “fun”: “The concept is simple: get straight to the point and focus only on sports. The campaign brings that idea to life with confidence, humor and a playful vibe”. So, the controversy is back on the table and the question is how far an account with so many millions of followers can fall.