Opinion: Opinion | No, Sydney Sweeney. A Naked Woman Isn't Some Great 'Revolution'

There is a particular kind of feminism that I find increasingly exhausting. It arrives wearing the language of empowerment, carries a hashtag, flashes a beautiful woman's body at the camera, and then expects us to applaud because, apparently, 'her body, her choice'.

Yes. Her body. Her choice. But whose story? That is the question Sydney Sweeney's new Novig advertisement has made impossible to ignore.

The actor appears in various stages of undress, using sporting equipment to cover her body as she performs or mimics a range of sports while promoting Novig, a sports prediction company in which Sweeney is also an equity holder and strategic partner. The campaign has been criticised by Olympic and elite sportswomen, who argue that it sexualises women's sport and trivialises the years of physical labour that female athletes put into their disciplines. Four-time Olympic gold medallist Ariarne Titmus called it a "kick in the face" to women who have spent their lives perfecting their craft. Sprinter Amy Hunt put it even more brutally: "This is what women in sport look like?" No. It's about hard work. Blood. Sweat. Tears.

And frankly, I understand their fury. Because this is not an argument about whether Sydney Sweeney is allowed to take her clothes off. It's about us women being tired of the trope that leads us to believe that every time a woman takes her clothes off, feminism has won. Because apparently, if a woman is naked by choice, we are not allowed to ask what is being sold around her, who is profiting from her body, or whether her sexuality has been lazily substituted for an actual idea.

So let me say this plainly: Sydney Sweeney can do whatever she wants with her body. She can pose naked. She can be sexy. She can sell lingerie. She can make provocative art. She can sit on a basketball hoop wearing nothing but a strategically placed ball.

But when that naked body becomes the centrepiece of an advertisement supposedly about sport, I reserve the right to ask: what is this saying about sportswomen?

Now imagine, just for a moment, doing this in India. Imagine taking Smriti Mandhana, Jemimah Rodrigues, or Manu Bhaker - the women who are currently making Indian sport cool, aspirational, and commercially irresistible - and saying, 'forget the glorious runs, the well-earned medals, the hard training, the years of discipline. Let's put an actress in a skimpy outfit, hand her a cricket bat or a pistol, and call it women's sport!'

Absurd right? That is precisely the absurdity athletes are objecting to. Can we really call this empowering? Can we say, "Well, she is a woman, and she chose to do it, so shut up"? Of course not.

Because PT Usha didn't spend decades becoming one of India's greatest athletes so that an actress could wear her sport as a sexy costume. Mary Kom didn't train through poverty, motherhood, injury, and prejudice to become a prop for somebody's advertising brainstorm. Sania Mirza did not change the economics and visibility of Indian women's tennis so that her racket could become a convenient excuse for cleavage.