I Came to the Gym to Lift Weights. Apparently, I Was Supposed to Bring Two Footballs

I’ve seen Sydney Sweeney’s new Novig sports betting ad. The sports equipment is doing a considerable amount of work covering her body. Presumably the wardrobe department got the afternoon off.

And honestly? I’m tired.

Not just “another sexualised advertising campaign” tired. Actual tired. The kind women bring to the gym after working, organising children, supporting family members and answering a message that begins, “Just wondering if you could…”

No. Nobody is just wondering. They want something.

Now apparently we’re meant to fit being a sports-themed fantasy into the schedule as well.

Have you seen the schedule?

The women I want to talk about aren’t standing on Olympic podiums. They’re the women who manage to get to a class between finishing work and making dinner. The women who organise childcare to have an hour to themselves. The women who turn up early because, once the rest of the house wakes up, their time belongs to everyone else.

For some of us, getting through the gym door deserves a medal.

A parking space and forty-five uninterrupted minutes would also be lovely.

Then along comes another campaign linking sport with a carefully staged, sexualised image of a woman.

How imaginative. Someone fetch the advertising industry a chair. It must be exhausted from all that innovation.

Meanwhile, here’s what an ordinary gym session can look like.

Hair tied up with whichever elastic survived the bottom of the handbag.

A sports bra selected for structural engineering.

Leggings undergoing a trust assessment every time you squat.

A face that says, “I’m concentrating,” “I might die,” or “Did I take the chicken out?”

Sometimes all three.

We’re lifting weights, catching our breath and trying to remember which number comes after eight. Apparently counting becomes an advanced academic discipline when your thighs are on fire.

If I’m holding two footballs against my chest, something has gone terribly wrong with the class instructions.

And if you tell me to look seductive during a lunge, you’ll receive the same expression I give someone who asks what’s for dinner while I’m already cooking it.

That effort deserves recognition.

Women exercise to get stronger. To enjoy themselves. To see friends. To clear their heads. To have a small piece of the day that is theirs.

We deserve to do that without another glossy reminder that a woman’s body is apparently most commercially useful when somebody else wants to look at it.

Sydney Sweeney is a real woman too. She can be attractive, sexual and athletic. So can any of us. Wearing makeup to the gym doesn’t cancel your workout, and nobody needs to look exhausted to earn respect.

My objection is to the advertising choice: reaching for women’s sexual appeal yet again when there is so much else about women worth showing.

Give us the effort. The strength. The laughter halfway through something horrible the instructor has cheerfully described as “a little finisher”.

Give us the woman who nearly cancelled but came anyway.

The woman starting again.

The woman who lifted more than last week.

The woman whose biggest achievement today was making time for herself without apologising for it.

Stop packaging us as a fantasy and calling it sport.

We have jobs, families, responsibilities, ambitions and bodies that do extraordinary amounts of ordinary work.

Give us some credit for that.

And please put the footballs back.

Someone might actually want to play.