Why Sydney Sweeney's nude ad struck such a nerve with women athletes

A sports-betting ad featuring a semi-nude Sydney Sweeney triggered a backlash across women's sports , with female athletes flooding social media with a countermessage: This is what women in sports actually look like.

The big picture: Ads have long sexualized women, but the Novig ad's appeal to the male gaze hit differently at a moment when female athletes have cultural cachet and the platforms to push back.

Driving the news: Highlight reels of women diving , pitching , tackling , shredding , lifting , skating , sprinting , leaping and covering sports have flooded social media this week — all with the same core message.

British sprinter Amy Hunt delivered that refrain on-air this week, smiling and out of breath after the World Athletics Ultimate Championship: "Sydney Sweeney, this is what women in sport look like: 21.4.

Muscles.

Hard work, blood, sweat, tears," referring to American Melissa Jefferson-Wooden's winning time .

Women's sports are in an era of rapid momentum: The NCAA reported record high women's participation earlier this year, while Bank of America predicted U.S. women's sports revenue will grow more than 250% by 2030.

There's still a long way to go on screen time, says Purdue University professor Cheryl Cooky, who studies sports and gender.

But she says traditional media increasingly covers women's sports more seriously.

Still, Cooky says , "it's in some ways not surprising that we get [the] Sydney Sweeney ad at this moment," describing it as "part of a backlash to the kinds of gains that women's sports, and by proxy, women more generally, are making in our society." Some online argued the ad wasn't meant to portray a female athlete and was instead targeting sports bettors, who are more likely to be men.

But Cooky says it still struck a nerve because "we thought we were past the point of having to make a case that women in sport contexts are not simply sexual objects for male consumption." Between the lines: Even if traditional media has made progress in covering women's athletics, corporate marketing tends to follow the cultural mood, explains Carly Drake, an expert on gender marketing at North Central College.

When feminism is prominent, brands sell empowerment.

When the pendulum swings the other way, advertising can reinforce that backlash against women.

"It really legitimizes the viewpoint that women and other vulnerable groups don't belong in sports," she says.