No War. No Death. But Plenty of Politics: My Tuppence Ha'penny's Worth on the Novig Just Sports Ad Campaign (2026) Featuring Sydney Sweeney

Sydney Sweeney showing us an alternative use for a pool 

table in her Novig Just Sports ad campaign (2026) 

 

 

I. 

 

Even though I don't always agree with her, I like the left-leaning British journalist and amusing cultural commentator Marina Hyde. 

 

Similarly, although I don't always agree with her, I like the right-of-centre British journalist and fearless GB News presenter Camilla Tominey. 

 

And so I was pleased to see that both women - despite their differing political sympathies - came out in support of the American actress and provocateuse Sydney Sweeney, who is back in the news for a new ad campaign [1] and once again facing abuse from various killjoys who resent her beauty, her breasts, and her refusal to conform to political and moral orthodoxy.   

 

 

II. 

 

Sweeney's new ad campaign is for Novig - an American sports prediction and trading company (or what we used to simply call a betting site) - and features the actress in various states of undress showcasing several different sports.    

 

To be fair, I can see why it might irritate professional sportswomen and old school feminists concerned with the way that women are sexualised in advertising in order to promote (and sell) stuff or services to a consumer market mostly made up of men. 

 

But, having said that, isn't it simply savvy business sense for her to "leverage her all-natural assets for commercial gain?" [2] The video for Novig - a company in which Ms Sweeney has shares - picked up over a million views in the first four days.  

 

Writing in The Telegraph, this is essentially Camilla Tominey's position. Although, in a slightly sapphic manner, she also admits that she has "become obsessed with Sydney Sweeney's breasts" - their size, shape, and gravity-defying nature, as well as their "sheer ubiquity on the world stage".  

 

I think this is partly explained by the fact that Ms Tominey has a drop of Italian blood in her veins and Italian beauty ideals historically embrace a full-figured, voluptuous body shape - think Sophia Loren (38-24-38) and Gina Lollobrigida (36-22-35). 

 

Personally, I prefer a slimmer, smaller-breasted body, but, like Tominey, I rather like the fact that Sweeney seems either incapable of covering up her breasts "or delightfully unwilling to do so". 

 

Addressing the backlash from female athletes who complain that Sweeney has sexualised women's sport and that it detracts from all their hard work and professionalism, Tominey reminds her readers that athletes "of both sexes have posed nude for commercial gain for decades". 

 

Thus, it's surely not that unreasonable that "an actress who has never claimed to be a professional sportswoman" should do the same: 

 

"Surely female athletes have bigger battles to fight - like the gender pay gap, inequality of funding or protecting competitors from abusive coaches, than directing their outrage at a woman leveraging her considerable assets for profit?"  

  

Ms Tominey concludes her Telegraph piece by taking a swipe at those progressives who scold Sweeney for unashamedly flaunting her breasts, whilst supporting trans men competing against women in sports including boxing, swimming, and weight-lifting.  

 

 

III.

 

Like Camilla Tominey, Marina Hyde is also prepared to be "insanely unfashionable" [3] and defend Sydney Sweeney. 

 

And like Ms Tominey, she can't help admiring Sweeney's breasts, "which are [...] seriously among the best in Hollywood" - maybe even the best. Breasts that add to the gaiety of nations by counteracting all the grey moral seriousness that threatens to envelop the world. 

  

If the reaction to last year's ad for American Eagle bordered on lunacy, then the reaction this time is just boring in its all-too-predictable nature and Hyde has very little sympathy with those women who claim it is a kick in the teeth to every woman who values sport for teaching the importance of things like teamwork, dedication, and the pursuit of excellence.    

  

She feels that it might have been more admirable if, rather than knock Sweeney for getting her tits out, they focused instead on the negative effects of legalised commercial gambling. Ultimately, Hyde loves the fact that Sweeney is "out there in the culture, pissing off reflexively judgmental people who ignore so many bigger issues". 

 

She continues:  

 

"That [Sweeney] has emerged as such a frequent culture wars punching bag says so much more about the predictable, playable nature of her serial detractors than it does about her. Why can’t they just face it - Sydney's gonna Sweeney." 

 

- And she's gonna do so without shame, embarrassment, or apology (which is what makes her such an admirable figure). She's a young woman - just turned 29 a few days ago - doing what she wants (including making the occasional dumb move or stupid remark). 

 

And her critics - even when they have a point - are such endlessly dreary bores: 

 

"I do hope Sweeney finds a way to continue apparently not giving a shit - and that everyone else considers they might have more fun if they took a leaf out of her book from time to time."  

 

 

Marina Hyde and Camilla Tominey 

stand alongside Sydney Sweeney

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Sweeney already pissed off a lot of people for her American Eagle ad last year, in which she playfully boasted of having great jeans. See the post 'My Tuppence Ha'penny's Worth on the Sydney Sweeney Controversy' (31 July 2025). And see also the follow up post 'Herr Nietzsche Agrees: Sydney Sweeney Hat Tolle Jeans' (2 Aug 2025). 

 

[2] Camilla Tominey, 'Don't knock Sydney Sweeney for having breasts that pass the pencil test', The Telegraph (15 Sept 2026). All quotes in section two of this post are taken from this article.  

 

[3] Marina Hyde, 'Are you outraged by Sydney Sweeney - again? More fool you', The Guardian (15 Sept 2026). All quotes in section three of this post are taken from this article. 

 

 

There's an Insulting Stereotype For That

The British Gas campaign that encourages consumers to rely upon local tradesmen - whatever the job - rather than attempt to fix things themselves, is probably the most irritating and offensive ad on TV at the moment. 

It opens in a store with some poor bloke holding a plunger, filthy from head to toe, clearly having tried - and failed - to clear a blockage in his plumbing system. The other people queuing at the till look on disapprovingly as the young woman serving - Sarah - informs him with a suppressed smirk: "There's a local hero for that." He glances at her with impotent rage, knowing full well that, whilst she's obviously a complete cunt, there's nothing he can do or say. 

In the second scene, another unfortunate fellow is in the shower, having trouble with the water control; as he presses a button, the bathroom lights go out. A woman - presumably his wife or girlfriend - carries on brushing her teeth at the sink in the dark with superior indifference, whilst also smugly reminding him: "There's a local hero for that."

In the third scene, an attractive woman sits having dinner in someone's flat. She's dressed as if on a date, wearing her favourite little black dress and there are wine glasses on the table. But her useless boyfriend is struggling to flush the toilet - clearly having broken the handle. Like Sarah, she pulls a knowing face before sliding her smart phone to him under the bathroom door, saying: "There's a local hero for that."

Later, in a scene that returns us to the above apartment, we finally see one of these local heroes. And, surprise, surprise, he's one of those friendly, helpful black characters that advertisers and TV executives love. Not so much a magical negro - for he's not there to impart ancient tribal wisdom - more a house nigger who can be trusted to fix things and provide service with a smile, before letting himself out the door and exiting the white-bread lifestyle into which he's been temporarily inserted. 
        

In brief, we have 30 seconds of insulting bullshit: thank you British Gas.  

To watch the British Gas 'Local Heroes' ad on YouTube, click here.   

On the Poetry and Politics of Modern Advertising

One of the more surprising things about Lawrence is his admiration for the writing skills of Jazz Age American advertisers, who discovered how to seduce consumers via a dynamic use of language. Anticipating by three decades Roland Barthes's mythology on detergents and Omo euphoria, Lawrence argues that some of the cleverest literature today is contained in ads for washing powders: 

"These advertisements are almost prose-poems. They give the word soap-suds a bubbly, shiny individual meaning which is very skilfully poetic, would, perhaps, be quite poetic to the mind which could forget that the poetry was bait on a hook."

He doesn't go so far as President Coolidge, who, in a speech three years earlier (1926), declared that advertising ministers to the spiritual side of trade and serves not merely to sell the American Dream, but inspire, ennoble, and redeem mankind, but Lawrence does concede that the commercial world has found a way to bring forth a genuinely imaginative reaction from its customers, just as modern poetry was losing its ability to do so.

Of course, Lawrence being Lawrence, he can't leave things there; can't resist - regrettably in my view - expressing his rather tired and tiresome contempt for the public who are, apparently, passively manipulated by advertising, failing to see or even feel the hook as it catches hold of them:

"The public, which is feeble-minded like an idiot, will never be able to preserve its individual reactions from the tricks of the exploiter. The public is always exploited and always will be exploited. The methods of exploitation merely vary. Today the public is tricked into laying the golden egg ... into giving the great goose-cackle of mob-acquiescence. ... The mass is forever vulgar, because it can't distinguish between its own original feelings and feelings which are diddled into existence by the exploiter."

This, as we now know, is a simplistic view of advertising and of the role played by the consumer. A view born of Lawrence's naive understanding of modern capitalism and the fact that he insists on subscribing to what Foucault terms a repressive hypothesis in which power is viewed negatively, in terms of oppression, rather than considered as a productive network which circulates throughout the entire social body and which is linked to pleasure by many complex mechanisms (not just poetry).  

Notes

D. H. Lawrence, 'Pornography and Obscenity', essay in Late Essays and Articles, ed. James T. Boulton, (Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 233-53. Lines quoted are on p. 238.

See also: Roland Barthes, 'Soap-Powders and Detergents', in Mythologies, selected and trans. by Annette Lavers, (Paladin Books, 1973), pp. 40-2. In this short but brilliant piece, Barthes discusses the poetry, politics, and psychology of advertising.