Add The New York Post on Google Megyn Kelly ripped the backlash against Sydney Sweeney’s racy new sports prediction-market ad — arguing the actress is being singled out because she is a registered Republican.
The former Fox News host blasted critics of Sweeney’s nearly nude campaign for sports prediction market Novig, which has drawn fire from several prominent female athletes who say the provocative spot demeans women in sports.
“I don’t get it,” Kelly said Wednesday on “The Megyn Kelly Show,” arguing that advertisers have long used sex appeal to market products to predominantly male sports audiences.
“Since the dawn of time, we’ve been selling sports to men by using sexy women in ads that air during the sporting events, in the bars where they watch the sporting events, in products around the sporting events,” Kelly said.
“Men tend to like sports and beer and sexy women, and this is not particularly controversial — until now, until this year, until Sydney Sweeney is the woman, I guess, who is a registered Republican and did the controversial jeans ad, so she must be punished.”
Kelly was referring to American Eagle’s recent “Sydney Sweeney has great jeans” ad campaign, which drew criticism from wokesters.
Sweeney’s Florida voter registration has been reported as Republican, dating to June 2024, though the actress has not publicly endorsed President Trump or another political candidate.
In the latest ad campaign, the 29-year-old “Euphoria” star appears seductively covered just by sporting equipment in Novig’s “Just Sports” campaign, which launched Sept. 9.
Sweeney is a strategic partner and equity holder in the Novig, according to the company.
She has said she was involved in creative discussions from the beginning and that she does not like to “just put my face on something.”
The campaign has sparked a fierce response from female athletes, including British sprinter Amy Hunt and former US gymnast Gracie Kramer.
Kramer posted a highlight reel of herself competing with the message, “I don’t know what Sydney Sweeney was doing, but this is what a woman in sports looks like.”
Hunt similarly pushed back on the ad after competing, saying, “Muscles, hard work, sweat, blood, tears.”
Kelly said those criticisms were aimed at a message Sweeney never actually delivered.
“She never purported to be a woman in sports,” Kelly said. “She never said this is what a woman in sports looks like.”
“She just said, ‘Sports. Sports. This is sports’.”
Kelly’s guest Emily Jashinsky agreed, saying critics were making “an incredible stretch” by suggesting the campaign presented Sweeney as an idealized female athlete.
“If the ad had said, ‘This is what a real female athlete looks like,’ and it’s Sydney Sweeney, like, airbrushed, looking beautiful, like she hasn’t sweat at all, that’s different,” Jashinsky said.
“There was no implication, there was no argument in the ad at all.”
Kelly also defended Sweeney’s decision to show off her body, accusing some critics of applying a double standard to female sexuality.
“It would it would like be a tragedy if that woman didn’t occasionally show off that body,” Kelly said.
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“If I look like that, I’d be doing nude ads too.”
“They’re so judgy about a gorgeous woman who wants to show it,” she added.
Kelly then returned to her theory that politics is driving at least some of the hostility toward the actress.
“When you have that person emerge in 2026, almost 2027, America, she has to be shamed,” Kelly said.
“Why again? Because she’s a Republican.”
