What Are We Still Rewarding?

I saw the Sydney Sweeney ad, and my immediate reaction was: this bothers me.

The weird part? I couldn’t immediately tell you why.

Sydney Sweeney is a beautiful woman. She’s allowed to be sexy. Women can be strong, athletic, competitive, feminine, beautiful, sexual—or any combination of those things.

In fact, I think we’ve made real progress there.

Women in sports don’t have to fit into one version of what an “athlete” is supposed to look like anymore. You can be incredibly strong and competitive and still embrace femininity. Those things don’t cancel each other out.

So why did this ad bother me?

The more I thought about it, the more I realized that maybe it’s because her body seems to be doing all the work.

I’m not even entirely sure what I’m supposed to be buying. But I know I’m supposed to look at her.

And as someone who has spent my life in sports, that hits differently.

I’ve spent my career trying to get women to see themselves as athletes, competitors, players and coaches—as people who simply belong on the golf course.

So it feels strange that we've made all this progress toward recognizing women for their athleticism, only to still fall back on their bodies as the easiest way to get our attention.

Maybe that's the contradiction I'm struggling with.

The progression is that women are finally allowed to be both strong and beautiful. The regression is that we're still so willing to make the beauty the thing people notice first.

It also made me think about the Good Good and Callaway commercial I wrote about recently.

To be very clear, I don't think these ads are the same. One used violence toward a woman as part of a joke. This one uses sexuality as its visual hook.

But they did leave me asking a similar question:

What are we saying about women when this is how we choose to use them to sell something connected to sports?

And then I realized there's another side to this conversation that we probably don't talk about enough.

We're the audience.

Marketers aren't operating in a vacuum. They're giving us what they believe we'll stop scrolling for, click on, talk about, share, watch and ultimately buy.

We complain about the algorithm while continuing to feed it.

And I'm not blaming men here. Sexualized imagery can appeal to all kinds of people. The issue isn't whether Sydney Sweeney is attractive. Obviously she is.

The question is why that attribute continues to be such a powerful tool for getting our attention—especially when it's being used alongside sports.

Because attention is currency.

Every click, view, replay, share, comment—and yes, even our outrage—tells marketers that they've found something that works.

I don't know that one person can change that. I don't think women can change it by themselves. And I'm certainly not suggesting we should stop appreciating beauty or sexuality.

But I do think we have more influence than we realize.

Maybe instead of only asking:

“Why are they still doing this?”

We should also be asking ourselves:

“What are we still rewarding?”

Because if we want people to see women as golfers first—not women who happen to play golf, but golfers—then their ability, competitiveness, improvement, curiosity and love of the game have to be interesting enough to earn our attention too.

And I think they are.

– Amanda