Woke is dead. Nike didn’t get the memo

Here’s what the brand meant by the ad (I think): Women are told they can’t win, they can’t fill stadiums, they can’t be emotional, they can’t take credit. So, girl, get out there and fight the man who wants to keep you down!

But the whole ad was girl power circa 1990, commercialized feminism at its most dated. When are girls and women told they can’t do these things anymore? Never. Simone Biles — who is not in the ad since she notably left Nike in 2021 to join Athleta, a brand “that focuses on women” — calls herself the GOAT all the time. 

Nike leaned into outdated tropes, punching at a fake enemy. Female athletes do all of these things and more, all the time. Women do fill stadiums (basketball star Caitlin Clark). Female athletes are emotional, and that emotion is cheered. (Tennis champion Aryna Sabalenka just threw her racket after losing in the finals at the Australian Open.)

Women’s sports are ascendant. There are professional women’s soccer teams with their own stadiums popping up in major cities across the country. Women’s gymnastics was the most-watched sport in the Paris Olympic Games this past summer. And there are women’s professional ice hockey teams now! Ice hockey! 

But amid a revenue slump, leadership turnover, and a stock downgrade, Nike saw fit to invest in the Super Bowl, a cultural unifier with over 127 million viewers. And it decided to focus on women and to position itself as “brave” for doing so. 

While more men watch the Super Bowl than women (53% vs. 47%), more women say they plan to watch the ads. With close to 30 million women saying they plan to tune in for the ads, that’s a sizable audience. But that isn’t the calculation from Nike. That’s not why it invested $16 million in media and likely another $2 million in production of the ad.

It was attempting to regain its renegade status during the most-watched programming moment of the year. On the heels of its “unbannable” Grammys ad, this ad tries to take Nike back to its roots, from commercial sellout today to the “just do it” rebel. That is its strength when it does it authentically.

But here’s the thing: Nike created an enemy, sexism telling women they can’t play sports, that no longer exists. So, the whole ad fell flat. It was raging against a machine gone quiet and fighting a straw man fallacy. The ad was fake feminism when what we need right now is real women and real athletes standing up for the integrity of women’s sports. And it is notable that not a single Olympic-level or high-level professional athlete has taken a stand against men competing in women’s sports. 

In fact, the only thing female athletes are told they can’t do these days is stand up for the protection of women’s sports. If they dare say women’s sports must be for women only, they will be pilloried, threatened, and ousted from polite society. They just might lose a coveted spot on whatever team they are on or vying to be on. And they’ll definitely lose lucrative endorsement deals as Bethany Hamilton did with the Rip Curl surf brand when she spoke out against the World Surf League’s policy of allowing men to compete against women in surfing.

My brand XX-XY Athletics made an ad called “Real Girls Rock” for a measly $40,000 and put zero media behind it. It highlights the punishing hard work female athletes put in and the abuse they take if they dare stand up for the protection of women’s sports. It went viral after J.K. Rowling tweeted it on Feb. 3, and the ad has racked up over 20 million views since then. Why? Because it spoke the truth. We said something actually brave, and it resonated with the 80% of people who agree that women’s sports are for women only.

Look, Nike, we know your brand perceives itself as rebellious with its “just do it” grit and by-any-means-necessary vibes. And the brand has been the driver of cool for decades, with limited edition collaborations and the most elite athletes in every sport representing the brand. But you’ve lost that cultural dominance. When the last CEO, John Donohoe, decided to mass-produce shoes that retained their cool status only because of scarcity and failed to lead with Caitlin Clark despite paying her $28 million dollars, the brand faltered. And this ad ain’t it.

Five months ago, XX-XY Athletics challenged Nike to stand up for female athletes with our ad “Dear Nike,” released on Oct. 10 last year. Yes, that’s X/X day. In the ad, girls ask pointedly, “Why won’t you stand up for me, Nike?” 

And on Feb. 4, after discovering the ad, American billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman tweeted that he was going to raise this issue with Eliot Hill, the new CEO of Nike, the very next day. We haven’t heard back, understandably, as it was a private meeting. I suspect Hill told Ackman, “We got this, big ad coming for the Super Bowl.”

But Nike left our question unanswered with its “So Win” campaign. 

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Nike has never stood up for women, it just profits off of pretending to do so. Famously, it ended track star Allyson’s Felix’s contract because she was pregnant. And the brand allegedly emotionally abused the best young track phenom in the world, Mary Cain, when she joined its Oregon Running Project, now shut down in part because of that controversy. Nike also featured transgender superstar Dylan Mulvaney in a social media campaign for running bras. A nonathlete man was used to sell a product that women need to train and compete. Make it make sense.

Nike isn’t brave. It doesn’t stand up for women. And despite all the high production values and expensive ad buys, we aren’t buying Nike’s latest run at regaining its renegade status. I’ll ask again: As the biggest and most influential name in sports, Nike, why won’t you just do it?

Jennifer Sey is a USA champion gymnast, the producer of the 2020 Emmy-winning documentary Athlete A on Netflix, and the founder and CEO of XX-XY Athletics.