Lily Huynh/The Cougar
Women have spent decades fighting to be recognized in sports for their athletic ability rather than their appearance, yet Sydney Sweeney’s latest advertisement for Novig, a sports prediction platform, shows how quickly that progress can be undermined when sexualization is used to generate attention.
The campaign features Sweeney posing nude with strategically placed sports equipment, using her body as the central attraction in a sports-focused advertisement.
While the marketing may have succeeded in generating attention, it raises a larger question about what the industry believes women are worth.
At a time when female athletes are building larger audiences and demanding equal recognition, choosing to market a sports platform through the sexualization of a woman feels like a return to the very attitudes they have spent years challenging.
What a woman in sports looks like
The backlash from female athletes has made that frustration impossible to ignore. Olympic swimming champion Ariarne Titmus and British sprinter Amy Hunt were among the athletes who publicly criticized the campaign, arguing that it undermines the progress women have made toward recognition of their athletic ability.
American gymnast Gracie Kramer responded by sharing footage of her own athletic achievements, highlighting the difference between treating women as decorative figures and recognizing them as competitors.
Their reactions reflect frustration that extends well beyond a single celebrity advertisement. Female athletes have spent decades fighting for greater visibility and recognition in an industry that has historically prioritized their male counterparts.
There is an important distinction between criticizing the advertisement and criticizing a woman’s right to express her sexuality.
Sweeney has every right to make decisions about her body and the opportunities she chooses to pursue. Female empowerment should not require women to hide their sexuality or conform to someone else’s definition of respectability.
However, personal freedom does not place commercial decisions beyond criticism, particularly when those decisions reinforce stereotypes that affect women working in an entirely different industry.
Sweeney is also an equity holder in Novig, and the company’s CEO said she played a major role in developing the campaign’s visuals and messaging. That makes her involvement more substantial than simply appearing in an advertisement designed by someone else.
Sex sells, but at what cost?
Novig has argued that the campaign was never intended to represent women’s sports and Sweeney is an actress, not a professional athlete.
But placing a sexualized image of a woman at the center of sports marketing still contributes to the way women are represented within sports culture, regardless of whether the advertisement was explicitly about female athletes.
Defenders of the campaign may argue that advertisements have always relied on attractive celebrities and that Sweeney should not be held responsible for the industry’s treatment of female athletes.
There is merit in recognizing that one advertisement cannot undo decades of progress and criticizing Sweeney personally does little to address the marketing decisions behind the campaign.
However, acknowledging her freedom to participate should not preclude a discussion of why this particular approach remains so commercially appealing.
The attention generated by the advertisement demonstrates the continued commercial appeal of this approach, but attention alone does not make a creative decision worthwhile.
Women in sports deserve an industry that recognizes them for their accomplishments rather than their appearance. The backlash surrounding Novig’s campaign offers an opportunity to examine whether the growing popularity of women’s sports is translating into genuine respect for the people who make those achievements possible.
Female athletes should be able to enter spaces historically dominated by men without having their accomplishments overshadowed by outdated marketing conventions.
Sweeney’s advertisement does not erase the progress women have made, but it demonstrates how easily the same attitudes that once limited their recognition can be repackaged as entertainment.
Women have fought too hard to be taken seriously in sports for their bodies to remain the industry’s easiest selling point.
opinion@thedailycougar.com
