Regarding the Sydney Sweeney ad, the left used to like coyly selective nudity

Content warning if you’re not okay with coyly suggestive nudity.

The left’s newest source of outrage is a cheeky (literally) ad that Sydney Sweeney did for Novig, a sports betting app. How dare Sweeney sexualize women in sports? But of course, the feminists’ problem isn’t sexualizing women, whether in sports or out; it’s that Sydney Sweeney refuses to play the woke game by politicizing everything. Instead, she uses her sexuality for entertainment like a wholesome 1950s sex goddess, not like an in-your-face woke lesbian athlete.

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It all began with Sweeney’s “good genes” ad for American Eagle, which was hugely successful, but that Democrats insisted was an ad for white supremacy:

That was bad enough, but leftists went ballistic when Sweeney refused to apologize for her sins by making a ritual political denunciation of anything conservative. (Video cued to begin playing at 14:20.)

Now, Sweeney is back with another, much more cheeky (and chesty) ad (content warning):

And again, the Democrats are outraged:

Notably, the women leading the pitchfork brigade lack Sweeney’s old-fashioned sex appeal:

That’s the set-up. But let’s talk about the hypocrisy.

There was a time when leftists didn’t mind coyly hidden naughty bits. In 1999’s wonderful “Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery,” the movie ends with Powers (Mike Myers) and Vanessa (Elizabeth Hurley) enjoying their honeymoon. There are no existing video clips of this scene, but Slate’s Jack Shafer described it in lascivious detail in 2008 (found on ):

To refresh your memory of the Powers technique, watch this YouTube clip from Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery. As newlyweds Austin Powers (Mike Myers) and Vanessa Kensington (Elizabeth Hurley) romp around their hotel suite in the all together, strategically placed objects screen their private parts from the camera’s lens. Pineapples and melons are hoisted to Kensington’s chest level just in time to mask her breasts. The camera carefully frames Powers and Kensington so that as she huffs and puffs to inflate a pink phallic balloon, it does double-entendre duty as Powers’ johnson. You get the idea.

Yes, indeed we do. And people across the political spectrum loved it.

Almost a decade after Austin Powers, people still loved the concept of cute ways to hide the naughty bits. We know this because the New York Times, in April 2008, ran an essay about a nude resort. The essay has two photos that hint at nudity without actually showing it, but Shafer was more excited by the Times’s additional content, which is no longer available:

Eschewing fruit and balloons, Times photographer Adriana Zehbrauskas relies on well-placed appendages in the section cover picture. You might want to pull your Times out of the recycling bin for examination as the Web reproduction doesn’t really do the composition justice. The guy on the left reclining under the awning conveniently places his left foot just so to conceal the wedding vegetables.

Elsewhere in the shot, an amply racked water volleyball player lifts her arm to block her left nipple from inspection. A woman on the pool deck hides her chest behind an umbrella pole. A swoosh of water fills the buttocks crack of the leaping volleyball player. In what may be the photo spread’s only slip, a female breast—nipple and all—can be seen in the extreme left of the shot. At least, I think I can see her nipple when I strain my eyes. After the jump, we’re treated to a shadow of a tennis player’s nut sack, and, in a Web-only extra, bent legs censor the mossy naughty bits of a sunbathing guy and gal. Her love bags? Veiled from the elements and my pervy eyes by her cowboy hat. And so on.

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And again, leftists loved it. How do we know? Because Times readers are leftists and the photographer, Adriana Zehbrauskas, claimed, “According to the NYT’s director of photography, it was the most successful online article in the newspaper’s history.”

But of course, those examples aren’t from the sports world, so maybe they don’t count.

Fortunately, we have multiple examples of leftists embracing coy photos of female athletes in the almost-nude, starting with that arch feminist and aggressively out lesbian, Megan Rapinoe:

Indeed, lots of female athletes have cheerfully strutted their almost-nude stuff for the world to “celebrate”:

In other words, the issue isn’t coy nudity or naked athletes. It’s the perennial Democrat insistence that “it’s different when we do it.”

One point Dan Bongino has frequently made over the years is that he never finds himself dancing around trying to defend a Republican from conduct he castigated in a Democrat. His principles are fixed and apply equally to all. “I will live by the same rules I ask you to live by.”

For Democrats, hypocrisy isn’t, as François de La Rochefoucauld once said, the tribute vice pays to virtue. For people whose only fixed principle is state power, hypocrisy is just another tool in the box. And that’s why what’s okay for every leftist is definitely not okay for Sydney Sweeney.

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Image created using AI.