Sweeney ad with outrage: A game we can only lose

S ydney Sweeney is naked. Once again. I know the actress' body well now. He can currently be seen on a large poster in New York's Times Square. Only the handle of a tennis racket prevents her butt from being visible. Another motif shows her sitting on a basketball hoop with her legs spread. The whole thing is an advertising campaign for a sports betting provider, and it's causing a lot of excitement.

Athletes like swimmer Ariarne Titmus criticize the fact that advertising does not take women seriously as athletes, but instead degrades them into sex objects. The advertising is “a slap in the face of every woman”.

The group Make America Hot Again counters that leftists were just fighting for sexual liberation, now they are complaining about a beautiful girl showing herself naked. Others complain that there is no shitstorm when fat women are naked and insinuate that the white, normally beautiful woman is now a discriminated minority.

Still others don't understand the excitement. Ultimately, Sweeney himself decided to show himself naked in exchange for money. Isn't it an achievement of third-wave feminism that we women are not only allowed to be smart, but also sexy? Others react to this with: You probably don't know what the difference is between sexy and sexist.

This is how the exchange of blows continues: those outraged are outraged by the outrage of the others. At this point it should be clear: Sex sells, but what sells even better is outrage.

Of course the campaign can be criticized, but the extent of it is exaggerated. In Germany too, everyone from the local newspaper to the national weekly newspaper reports on the campaign - and usually not just with one article, but with two, three or four. And who benefits? Of course the company and Sweeney herself, who holds shares in it. So it's not a steep thesis that the company took the outrage into account.

It's not the first time an ad featuring Sweeney has sparked such a huge debate. A year ago she advertised the jeans brand American Eagle with the slogan “Sydney Sweeney has great jeans”. The word jeans sounds like genes. Since Sweeney is white, has blonde hair and blue eyes, this is a clear play on the Nazi concept of eugenics. The MAGA crowd lashed out violently against the “woken”. Sweeney and the brand played dumb and cashed in: the brand's shares rose significantly. Today we know that it was not anti-racist outrage that triggered the debate, but rather right-wing politicians and influencers - disguised as a woke shitstorm. This is how culture war works today.

Even though we know this, we keep falling for it. We know that outrage is the way to generate the most attention. We also know that it is precisely the right-wingers who are particularly good at this game. And not just in advertising, but also in social debates such as the one about an afternoon for black children at the Berlin Volksbühne swimming pool. The AfD has a lot of practice in turning on the outrage machine.

We know the rules of the game, but we still don't know how to win it. Because (justified) criticism of the matter often leads to the wrong people benefiting in the end. But what is the alternative? Ignorance when boundaries are pushed and the marginalized are attacked? Looking the other way when women are forced into roles they thought they had overcome?

What I know: I can't escape the game either. This text is the proof.