By now, I’m sure you’ve all seen the new Novig Ad starring Sydney Sweeny, if not, honestly don’t bother.
This ad reinforces every single stereotype about the patriarchy and misogyny in sport: women are an object for sex and men watch tough sports! This ad, promoting Novig’s ‘just sports’ trading app, leaves little to the imagination and objectifies Sydney Sweeny for their cis-straight-male target audience.
After woman have spent centuries fighting for equal, and female athletes constantly proving their platform, this ad takes a giant step backwards. It takes a space where woman are already fighting to be taken seriously and essentially says “don’t worry, we know what you’re here for.” Which is, apparently, Sydney Sweeny’s body.
The biggest problem with this ad is: when you are advertising a sports trading app, why is the selling point a woman’s sexuality rather than, you know, the sport?
The ad leans into the idea that sport is a male-dominated space and it sexualises women at the disposal of such. And that matters because advertising doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Sport has historically been marketed around toxic masculinity: aggression, competition, strength, and, above all, men. Woman have had to fight to be recognised as athletes. Female sports coverage still struggles for visibility, and often female athletes have a secondary career to support their low pay.
So, when an ad uses a woman’s body to sell a product supposedly centered around sport, it reinforces the exact culture woman in sport have been trying to move beyond.
Novig had an opportunity to make an ad about sport and sport culture. Instead, they chose the oldest trick in the patriarchy handbook: put an attractive woman on the screen and hope that people listen to what the pretty lady is saying.
And maybe that’s the most telling part, woman existing as attractive beings isn’t the problem, the problem is that a woman’s body is being profited off to sell something to men.
Novig might call it ‘just sports’. But when the advertisement relies on the same tired idea about who sports are for and how women fit into that world, it becomes more than just an ad.
