Novig x Sydney Sweeney: How Misrepresentation of Women in Advertising Damages the Perception of an Entire Industry
A still from the Novig ad | Credit: Novig
I love sport but so far in my career my passion for inclusive marketing and my enthusiasm for all things sport have never crossed paths like this. Picture the scene: I was tuning into the Ultimate Athletics Championship munching my way through a bag of Haribo when I heard British sprint queen, Amy Hunt, say: “Sydney Sweeney, this is what women in sport look like: 21.4. Muscles. Hard work, blood, sweat, tears. This is a beautiful evening.”
You can imagine my bemusement. What on Earth does Sydney Sweeney have to do with women in sport? Then I saw that Novig ad (and trust me when I say I will never be able to unsee it). The ad for the American sports prediction market features a nearly naked Sweeney in various suggestive poses, her modesty “protected” by only strategically placed sporting equipment. There’s no narrative to the ad beyond selling Novig’s betting service in what I presume to be a seductive manner.
Normally, I stay balanced in any analysis but there’s really nothing to analyse. This is objectification of women for publicity and clout. “Are we really prepared to put profit before the years of progress we’ve made towards forgetting the female stereotype?” I wondered. The answer it seems is a resounding yes.
The Uncomfortable Truth Behind the Ad
I have nothing against Sydney Sweeney as a person – or even as a woman – but I do have a few things I’d like to say to her if I ever got to meet her. I get that being controversial and causing controversy is part of her brand. I even get that using her body to gain attention is part of her brand (you only need to take a look at her Instagram profile to see what I mean.) Normally, I’d be happy to see a woman embrace her body and be herself. But in this ad, there’s little narrative beyond selling a betting service by posing
But in the Novig ad, I don’t see an empowered woman. I see a woman objectifying and sexualising herself for the male gaze to make profit for a brand she’d probably have no interest in if she weren’t famous. It’s clear it wasn’t only me and Amy Hunt that saw things this way. Within a few hours of the ad going live, American Olympic gymnast Gracie Kramer posted a reel on Instagram with the overlay “idk what Sydney Sweeney was doing, but this is what a woman in sports looks like,” which has over 1.2 million likes at the time of writing. This started a trend with many professional and amateur female and athletes sharing similar videos across Instagram and TikTok. At the same time some of the world’s most recognisable sports stars like cyclist Sophie Capewell and swimmer Ariarne Titmus were voicing their criticism.
Sydney Sweeney’s actions are distasteful and it was ultimately her decision to get involved in the campaign but I think she’s grabbing the headlines whilst we’re ignoring the fact that there was a whole team working on the ad, and more than that data existed to suggest that the demographic interested in Novig would respond positively to this ad and though I can’t see the data, I’m guessing they were right. And that, I find more deeply unsettling than a single decision made by one woman.
Doubling Down
That being said, I had hoped she would take accountability for the impact her decision to star in such a campaign had on female athletes at the top of their game but, alas, I think there’s more chance of bumping into a woolly mammoth in central London! According to The Guardian, our Sydney’s response was not to acknowledge the criticism and promise to reflect on it like one might reasonably expect (regardless of whether she had any intention of doing it). Instead, she shared an Instagram post featuring a whole host of female athletes including Serena Williams and Megan Rappinoe who had posed for cover photographs involving a level of nudity. Interestingly, I can’t find any trace of the post as I’m writing this around 48 hours after it went live other than screenshots being shared on various social media platforms and newspaper articles.
I think we can surmise that a very stressed PR advisor has probably told her that her defence isn’t really a defence. Which let’s face it, it’s not. All the female athletes that featured on her post are just that – athletes. Sydney Sweeney is not. Fundamentally, the issue here is one of appropriation. The Novig ad sexualises and demeans the very idea of women in sport for monetary gain. Yes, the likes of Serena Williams and Megan Rappinoe did pose for risqué photoshoots, but they weren’t speaking on behalf of all female athletes, they were simply representing themselves. This ad represents the abstract idea of women in sport as sexual objects and when you think about it in those terms, it’s undoing decades of progress women involved in sport from the grassroots to the top echelons have made. That’s why people are angry.
History Repeats
Perhaps the lack of depth and insight in this response shouldn’t be entirely surprising given that it’s not the first time that Sydney Sweeney has been involved in an advertising campaign that caused widespread offence. In 2025, she was caught in yet another advertising faux pas when the American Eagle "Good Jeans" campaign she fronted was called out for subtly echoing the rhetoric of eugenics by linking blonde hair, blue eyes, and white skin to having good genes. If you aren't familiar with the history, it was an obsession with eugenics that led to Hitler committing some of the worst atrocities in history against Jewish people and other minority groups. Hitler's idea was to create a “Pure Aryan race" - people with blonde hair, blue eyes, white skin and a non-disabled body and no one else - so it's pretty clear why it was deemed as offensive. When questioned about the criticism her response amounted to denying that she was even aware of it as she’d been filming her hit TV show, Euphoria, at the time.
And it’s only fair to point out that there are staunch defenders of her position on the issue. Journalists and commentators have variously pointed out that she has free will to decide how she makes her money (correct), she's in her 20s so she's bound to make mistakes (swapping one stereotype for another, much?) and insinuate that women calling out the advert are jealous of her breasts (just no).
The Destruction of Trust
However, I think it’s about time our focus shifted from Sydney to the company’s response which tells us more than a response from the star of the ad ever could. Jacob Fortinsky, the Founder and CEO of Novig: “Sydney is great at captivating audiences and being the centre of attention,” he said. “In some sense, it forces us into the national discourse.”
So, this is a publicity stunt that has the intention of placing a woman at the centre of a fiery international debate whilst you can hide behind your brand, avoid the worst of the vitriol and reap the commercial benefits? Yeah, that’s really not OK. Regardless of the fact that the woman chosen had autonomy in deciding to get involved, I very much doubt she thought that it would receive this level of attention. For the company to turn the conversation back to Sydney’s involvement just so that they can deflect from their own (much greater) culpability in pushing this campaign live is frankly unacceptable
He also made reference to the fact that Novig is restricted to over 21s only, therefore the adult nature of the content is appropriate for the audience. That doesn’t fly. Yes, the age restrictions on the platform stop under 21s accessing the gambling but they don’t stop young girls from watching the ad and seeing a reductionist version of “sportswoman” that can impact the way they view female athletes for a long time to come. Just a quick scroll through my Threads feed brought up a post where a mum was concerned that this ad had been served to her 7-year-old daughter whilst she was using the dedicated YouTube Kids app.
And again, his allusions to the fact that it’s not meant to represent a sportswoman are really irrelevant. I’m going to go a bit geeky here and say that it all comes down to the concept of the signifier and the signified developed by the philosopher Ferdinand de Saussaure. Put simply, the signifier is the physical form of the signs we’re given to interpret (in this case a nearly naked woman in a provocative pose covered in sports equipment) and the signified is the mental concept it brings to mind. As there’s very little going on in the ad other than that, I find it hard to believe that there is anyone on Earth whose automatic thought processes don’t conjure up the simple equation: sport + woman = sportswoman. That’s the kind of thing that the advertising industry should be conscious of rather than trying to exploit.
Decoding these comments, it seems like Novig’s attitude is one of “all publicity is good publicity”. I disrespectfully disagree, Mr Fortinsky. This is not a national discourse, this is a discourse about objectification for profit that I fear is going to damage the trust that women have in the marketing and advertising industry – something that was low even before this ad was released.
What Women Really Think
The depiction of women in advertising has been a source of debate since the inception of the industry. In fact, The Advertising Standards Authority updated the CAP Code (the rulebook for all brands and marketers) in 2018 to prohibit ads that "include gender stereotypes that are likely to cause harm, or serious or widespread offence”. One of the named ways that brands can violate the code is by objectifying women in a way that is harmful or promotes gender stereotypes. As a bright-eyed and bushy-tailed student, I thought this was the turning point for advertising’s relationship with the female body, but the numbers tell a different story.
A study by Attest of 100 UK women in May 2026 found that 41% didn't feel represented by existing advertising and 15% felt objectified. But beyond the numbers, this study provided something that many others don't: it gave respondents the ability to add their thoughts to their questionnaire responses. Among some of the words that cropped up were:
· Boxed in
· Oversexualised
· Pigeon-holed
· Stereotyped
Before any professional researchers come at me with pitchforks, I know that this is a tiny study that isn’t a representative sample but with its recency and relevance, it echoes the common concerns that women have been voicing for years. Bringing such issues into a 2026 context wasn’t something I’d ever thought I’d have to do, but here we are.
The Repair Bill
Enough with the doom and gloom! Whilst it’s too early to take stock of the exact damage this ad has caused to women’s trust in the industry, I don’t think it’s irreparable. But repairing that damage is going to require investment into inclusive marketing – and more importantly, a sustained commitment to representing women how they want to be seen.
Representation isn’t as simple as just having women in a brand’s advertising and marketing. It’s about considering all your stakeholders’ needs from the women working on the campaign to the females in your audience and even potential investors. It’s about testing the assumptions of how you think women want to be represented at all stages of the creative process. And most importantly, it’s about building brand equity and demonstrating time and again that women can trust you to do the right thing.
As for this particular scandal, it will be consigned to the history books before long, the participants will walk away with the profits and we’ll move on to talking about something else but the echoes of this fallout are sure to bug us for years to come. That in itself should be a wake-up call that objectification in advertising has no place in 2026.
If you’d like to build a sustainable marketing strategy or create written content that places representation and inclusion at the forefront, contact me today to book a discovery call and learn more about how my services – informed by my REAL Inclusive Marketing Method – could help your business build trust with commonly misrepresented groups.