“Prove It”: A Slap in the Face for Women in Sports

“Think you know sports? Prove it.” If you grew up as a girl in sport, you are likely to be all too familiar with a version of these words. Ironically, these are the exact words pronounced by Sydney Sweeney in a recent advertisement for the sports betting company Novig. This advertisement, which aired last week at the time of writing this article, sparked much controversy and debate online about the oversexualization and discrimination of women in sports. The ad features Sweeney – an equity partner in the company – dressed in little to no clothes, covered up by various sports equipment as she advertises the platform’s motto of “no wars, no deaths, no politics…just sports.” This is not the first time that Sweeney’s poor marketing choices have been the subject of popular discourse. Over the past year, she has garnered a reputation for controversial ads such as the 2025 American Eagles Jeans ad and the 2025 Dr. Squash bathwater soap ad. Some have praised Novig’s ad for its provocative marketing tactics, calling to its success in garnering attention and discourse. Others have argued that Sweeney has the right to use her body however she would like and that critics are overreacting. For many women, however, this conversation around women’s place in sports is nothing new.

“I was so stunned the first time I saw the ad,” says Zoe Lenci, a fourth-year member of the StFX Women’s Varsity Rugby team. “I could not believe this was something [that was] produced this year.” Lenci spent most of her life playing sport, most notably football and rugby. Her experiences as a woman in football informed much of her understanding of society’s perception of women in male-dominated sports. “I was extremely lucky to be on the team I was on, with the teammates and coaches I had. Whenever I fought a battle simply for being a woman I was never alone even though I was the only girl”, she says. However, the support she received from her team was not enough to counter the difficulties she faced as a woman. “There were quite a few people who did not share the same opinion as my teammates, and systems in place that liked to remind me I was out of place.” Lenci recounts the isolation that sometimes came with being the only girl on the team: “My helmet and shoulder pads had to be locked in a teacher’s office that I didn’t have the keys to, and on game days I was alone in a dark, quiet school.” This isolation was “glamourous” compared to away games, where she had to “change behind sheds, in small bathrooms, and random storage lockers.” Yet changing rooms were the least of Lenci’s concerns. On the field, she faced threats to her health and safety as the only girl on the field. While playing on the offensive line, Lenci recalls one particular team who would “check where [she] was in the formation and send two or three guys right at [her].” It doesn’t take excessive football knowledge to understand that this decision was likely not tactical but rather was targeting the only girl on the field. One game, against this same team, “my coach pulled me off the field because their players had made comments to ours that they intend[ed] to make me unable to play football, or worse,” says Lenci.

When she turned to coaching, she recalls the pride that she felt when she saw what she describes as “a sight [she] hadn’t seen before”: there were now four girls on the team. “All four of their moms thanked me individually for showing them there was a space for women in football. It’s for this very reason that Sweeney’s ad makes me so gutted and outraged. Every inch of ground I fought for feels like it’s been erased.” Lenci’s sentiments were echoed throughout much of the social discourse over the past week. Many women have taken to social media to post statements and videos confronting Sweeney’s advertisement with their own athletic achievements, with the caption “this is what women in sports look like.” They call to the advertisement’s problematic oversexualization of women’s bodies, particularly those of athletes. Like Lenci, women around the world were shocked that this rhetoric about women’s place in sports was still so prevalent in mainstream media. “It reminds me of ads [from] when I was young, a marketing strategy of the past that was used to degrade women and appeal to the male gaze”, says Lenci.

For female athletes, their gender has been an inescapable element of their experience in sports. Sierra Wood, a graduated member of the StFX Women’s Varsity Rugby Team and former teammate to Lenci, talked about her experience growing up in sport. “I grew up in hockey. I did hockey all the way up to grade ten and then started rugby when I was in high school as well”, she says. She recalls the limitations imposed on women in sport growing up: “Especially in hockey, there was no women’s league. It [was] different. We [women] don’t check in hockey, but we have body contact, whereas men have checking.” Checking refers to a form of contact in hockey used to dispossess a player of the puck, using the upper part of the body to hit an opponent (often into the boards). This kind of contact is prohibited in the women’s game and has been the subject of controversial discourse on whether this prohibition within the women’s game is due to a stereotyping of female athletes as more fragile or less strong than male athletes. Due to this difference, Wood argues that this portrays the women’s game as “a lot less physical” – and in a game such as hockey, which gathers much of its crowd due to the fast pace and physicality of the game, this can become a detrimental element of the loss of interest in the women’s game.

In rugby, Wood argues that “it’s a sport in which men and women are seen very equally.” Yet that has not always been the case. The StFX Women’s Varsity Rugby program itself bore witness the growth that women’s equality in sports has seen over the past few decades. The program, which was established over 30 years ago by current Head Coach Mike Cavanagh, began as second-rate to the men’s team. “[At] StFX, our girls that started out, they started out wearing the men’s jerseys after their games. That was the only way they would be able to play their games. So they’d have sweaty, bloody, gross jerseys that they’d throw on and play” recounts Wood. She speaks with much pride about the changes that have come about since then: “We had a lot of them come back last year at homecoming or just on a weekend…they were blown away by the support we have now…they didn’t necessarily get that experience so they’re super supportive of what [we’re] doing now.”

Sophia Kydd, a recent StFX graduate, talked to me about her experiences growing up in sport. “I did track, triathlon, and swim team my whole life,” says Kydd. Throughout her life, she noticed a distinct difference in the respect for feminine sports compared to the rest: “When I was a kid, I did synchronized swimming, which was just as difficult as competitive swimming or track but I feel like people didn’t really appreciate that because it was this very feminine sport.” She also noticed that many of her friends that did cheer or dance were taken this same way. “I feel like all these sports that were female dominated were just so much less appreciated,” she says. When she saw the Novig advertisement, Kydd recalls being “upset” at the “sexual undertone” of the campaign. “You see gymnasts in the Olympics and track athletes and they’re wearing spandex and shorts and sports bras because they have to. And then [they are] sexualized and we fought so hard for that to not be a thing. And it’s still a thing because it’s ads like this that perpetuate it.”

Body image is another added pressure to women in sports and has impacted women’s participation in sports for decades. “Women, especially in their teen years, are portrayed in a way where body image is kind of everything,” says Wood. “You see makeup ads, billboards of people that are beautiful, and [you think] “oh I don’t compare to them.”” When societal expectation of women as thin and delicate opposes the strength and grit that come with sport, young girls and women often feel conflicted between their identities and societal expectations. Sport provides them a space in which they can be celebrated as they are. “In sport, it’s very much about what your body’s able to do and who you are more as a person rather than just what you put out,” says Wood. Kydd agrees with her, stating that “Women have been taught their whole lives to be soft and to cater to everybody…What’s so good about sports is that it teaches women and young girls that this is something they can do themselves.” She states that “this ad, whether it says it explicitly or not, is just saying you want to cater to the male gaze…and these sports are not for you.”

We are experiencing a pivotal point in history for the growth of women’s sports. With the  recent development of the PWHL as well as the NSL in Canada, the constant record-breaking attendance numbers in the WSL, WNBA, Women’s NCAA collegiate basketball, and the NWSL, as well as the strides taken in the fight for equal pay, women have more opportunities in sport than they ever have. And it’s for these reasons that an advertisement such as this one is so regressive. “It puts female athletes in a class below male athletes, a place I and every female athlete I know have spent their entire careers crawling out of,” says Lenci. Women belong in sport. In fact, they excel in it, regardless of their appearance. “Sports were the main reason that I learned to stand up for myself and advocate for myself in this world…if it wasn’t for [sports], I don’t think I would be the person I am,” states Kydd. Sports teach young girls and women more than simply how to pass a ball or shoot a puck: it teaches them teamwork, perseverance, strength, confidence, and many more skills that form who they become. So no, Novig, sports cannot have “no politics.” Because sport belongs to everyone, no matter one’s gender, no matter who tries to shut us out.