I have Wi-Fi. I have a human heart. Of course I fired up the 60-second spot for Novig, a sports betting company. I was drawn not by the pulchritude of Sydney Sweeney, although that is undeniable, but by the many accounts of female athletes being enraged by the ad. I myself can’t catch a wiffle ball on an airless day, but I was born before Title IX, in the time when girls were allowed to follow their interests and make something of themselves. Still, I wanted to see what the commotion was about. By the end of the ad, I wondered if I’d found the wrong one because the ad I saw didn’t concern women athletes in any remote way.
It’s a sleek ad featuring the world’s sexiest woman saying the word “sports” over and over again, and if that isn’t an inducement to the average online sports bettor (overwhelmingly young and male), nothing is. I knew that the ad was stirring up something powerful because of the moralizing terms with which the press described Sweeney’s appearance in the ad. Variety called the ad “risqué,” ESPN said the star wore “little or no clothing,” and many outlets described her as “nearly nude.” What was this, Raquel Welch wearing a fur bikini in One Million Years BC?
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