What Women Really Hate About Sydney Sweeney

There’s been much in the press in recent days about the famously upholstered actress and entrepreneur Sydney Sweeney’s new ‘naked betting advert’. The Telegraph was one of many media outlets to cover the fusillade of protest from female athletes for “sexualising women’s sport“:

The 29 year-old Euphoria star has been criticised by female athletes, who have accused her of setting back women in sport.

Amy Hunt, the British sprint champion, stared directly down the camera after the women’s 200-metre final at the World Athletics Ultimate Championship on Sunday and said: “Sydney Sweeney, this is what women’s sport looks like. Hard work, sweat, blood, tears. This is a beautiful evening.”

Ariarne Titmus, an Australian Olympic gold medal-winning swimmer, said: “How do we live in a world where monetising a woman’s body and sexualising women’s sport is still a thing?”

She described the campaign as “a kick in the face to every woman who has dedicated her life to perfecting her craft” and to “every woman who enjoys sports for what it really is – teamwork, friendship, dedication, excellence, unity”.

Apart from the fact that Ariarne Titmus must be naïve beyond measurement, one thing all humans are is great at attempting to rationalise what are fundamentally the irrational emotions that drive so much of what we do and think.

I took part in Channel 4’s long-running series Time Team for many years in various guises, mainly as its Roman expert but also as a historian for WW2 digs and occasional others. For Series 17 and 18, which aired in 2010-11, Channel 4 had ordered that the classicist and presenter Bettany Hughes be added to the line-up for certain episodes.

The argument was simple. Time Team’s audience was dominated by men, often fathers watching with their children. For the right-on Channel 4 that was no good: there had to be more women viewers and Bettany, an effusive and blousy screen presence together with a scholarly and published background, was bound to help solve the problem.

She didn’t. No fault of hers, of course. Back then I knew Bettany because I’d worked with her on other shows. She’s very good at her job. It was one of the show’s executive producers who told me what went wrong.

Female viewers turned off rather than on. It turned out that the wives or partners of the enthusiastic male viewers loathed sitting on the couch next to a man ogling Bettany, a highly intelligent and attractive woman of around their own age. Or to be blunt, probably more intelligent and attractive than them. And there was the rub.

But there’s more to it. For nine years I was a girls’ grammar school History and Classics teacher. I worked with my wife, a much more experienced teacher. We both taught History, but I taught Classical Civilisation on my own, and my life was dominated by Sixth Form teaching. I was fascinated by how Bettany had bombed on Time Team, because I’d already discovered a similar problem.

Bettany had made several excellent TV films on the Bronze Age Mycenaean and Minoan Civilisation in Greece and the Aegean. Since that was a core component of the course I taught it was obvious to me that I should use them. So, I did. After all, she was surely also a positive role model for young women and all that. What could possibly go wrong?

The films were a disaster in the classroom. Why? The girls hated her. I mean, really hated her. They tried to rationalise their loathing, but I knew them well enough for them to be more expansive and to explain in more detail why they had taken such exception to her.

They found Bettany to be threatening, the embodiment of female success, intellect and accomplishment as a presenter and she intimidated them. The scene about Minoan pearl divers which she presented in a low-cut swimsuit while bobbing about in the water, so to speak, provoked the greatest disgust.

Far from being inspired, my students seemed to be consumed by a resentful jealousy, that Bettany was being depicted as who they ought to aspire to be but felt they could never match.

I had to abandon using the films altogether.

As a father with four sons this was a revelation to me, a portal to a world I’d never experienced before. It showed me just how wide of the mark TV executives, female ones included, can be when it comes to understanding what women want, or rather what they don’t want.

I tried using Classics films made by other female presenters, and it made no difference, regardless of their looks or age. The problem for the students seemed to be confident and accomplished women, women who know what they want and who are comfortable with who they are – which describes Sweeney perfectly.

If on the other hand, I put on a film presented by Dan Snow, the ridiculously good-looking Roger Moore of history and archaeology TV, the students were gripped from start to finish. Simple: they weren’t threatened by him.

Now, you could just blithely dismiss all of what I’ve described, except that I was there and saw it for myself.

Obviously, it would be absurd to say that all women react like the way I’ve described. Camilla Tominey wrote a Telegraph piece in which she expressed her admiration for Sweeney, asking “Why shouldn’t the actress leverage her all-natural assets for commercial gain?“

“And who can blame her? If I looked like Ms Sweeney, I would walk around topless as often as humanly possible. Most women would, if they were being honest,” said Tominey.

She’d cut right to the heart of the matter. Indeed, she encouraged me to write this piece when I told her about my experiences.

Back to the Telegraph piece I started with, and another quote:

Tilly Kearns, an Australian water polo silver medallist, posted a montage of her sport with the caption: “I absolutely f—ing hate Sydney Sweeney’s new sports ad.”

Yes, I bet she does. Experto credite, says the Roman poet Vergil in his poem the Aeneid, “trust one who knows”.

Guy de la Bédoyère is a historian and writer with numerous books to his credit, most concerned with the ancient world, though his latest is The Confessions of Samuel Pepys (Abacus 2025). Between 2007 and 2016 he taught History and Classics to hundreds of girls, many of whom went on to study History or Classics at university. He has contributed to the Daily Sceptic since its earliest days.