Be whatever you want, but don't get fat.

The American professional women's hockey league, the PWHL, founded in January 2024, has quickly become one of the most significant phenomena in women's sports. The first game, broadcast simultaneously on all three Canadian national networks, drew nearly three million viewers. Since then, audiences and arena attendance have steadily increased. In the second season, average attendance doubled compared to the inaugural season, and the league has consistently broken attendance records. Merchandise sales have also been remarkable. Furthermore, the gold and silver medals at the Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics were won by the United States and Canada, respectively. Most of their players compete in the PWHL, further enhancing the league's prestige.

Amid this meteoric rise, it's no surprise that the competition has also established itself as a commercial platform. Major brands have colonized women's hockey and identified it as a space of high symbolic value, associating it with the idea of ​​emancipation—a narrative that contemporary marketing knows how to capitalize on very quickly. Two photographs of the Place Bell arena in Laval, Quebec, during a Montreal Victoire game, demonstrate the extent to which this has been the case. The main sponsors of the PWHL are advertised on the enormous central scoreboard hanging over the ice. One of them, which bathes the arena in striking pink, is Mattel, with its Barbie brand and the obvious slogan that still tells girls they can be anything they want: "You can be anything"Barbie, the most sexist and objectifying doll in history, has become, largely thanks to the film, a symbol of female empowerment. Despite efforts in recent years to be a more inclusive and diverse doll, she continues to reinforce very hegemonic beauty standards. But brands also operate as ideological narratives, and sports are a perfect platform for Mattel to shift the doll's normative femininity into a context traditionally associated with masculinity. The other advertisement that appeared on the scoreboard after Barbie was even more telling. Showing them consecutively had devastating effects. It was an advertisement for Novo Nordisk, the manufacturer of Wegovy and Ozempic, drugs with clinical uses to combat diabetes and obesity. It is further proof of how these medications are being exploited for aesthetic purposes and are reinforcing unrealistic body ideals. "Ask your doctor," a huge banner on the center scoreboard of the arena suggests, implying that your body needs to be modified.

We've gone from the tyranny of body control to the medicalization of body control. The combination of these two ads perfectly captures today's social imperatives. Barbie appears to remind you that you can be anything, but the following slogan makes it clear that, whatever you choose, above all, be thin. You can be whatever you want, but don't get fat. Both sponsors agree on one thing: they share the idea that women's bodies must be molded and optimized. In a sports context, the emphasis is on linking femininity with appearance and, above all, on reminding us that women's bodies are always susceptible to improvement. Advertising doesn't just sell products. It sells us doses of dissatisfaction so that we succumb to buying these products. It's one of the common paradoxes of the contemporary market: selling empowerment and insecurity simultaneously.