Sky’s Halo channel was a feminist catastrophe

It had been billed as a “dedicated platform for women to enjoy all sports, while amplifying female voices and perspectives.” So what might one expect from this exciting new venture? Expert analysis of the latest Lionesses’ game? Interviews with female athletes? Tactical breakdowns of netball?  

No. What young women got from Halo was a great deal of pink. There were memes with a pink glittery border. There was text in Barbie pink. Because nothing says “empowering female fans” like talking to them as if they were six.

The slogan – Sky Sports’s “lil sis” – is so laughable and patronising I can’t quite believe it wasn’t strangled at birth. There must have been corporate meetings about it. Various managers must have signed it off. And yet it appears that no-one said: “Hmm, does this feel a little… sexist? A touch patronising?”

The Halo post that sparked the most online discussion was one that depicted Manchester City striker Erling Haaland running down the pitch with the caption “How the Hot Girl Walk + Matcha Combo hits”.

The “joke” here, as far as I can tell, is this: Haaland is good at football, and going on a walk with a matcha (a green tea popular with young people, especially women) is also considered good. That’s it. That’s the punchline. I had to explain this to my dad twice, and I still don’t think he understands it.

Predictably, the internet went wild. Women started making sarcastic comments under completely unrelated Sky Sports posts. “Sorry, can you make the font pink? I can’t understand it otherwise,” said one. There were parodies. Have I Got News For You stuck the boot in. And within three days, Halo was quietly scrapped.

That no-one at Sky Sports stepped in to spare the channel this embarrassment at a much earlier stage is baffling. But the general vibe of Halo doesn’t surprise me at all. Because for the last few years, we’ve watched a fairly noticeable shift in how brands market to women – and it is depressing.

Take Monster Energy’s new drink marketed at women. It is called “FLRT”, with the usual neon green claw replaced with pastels and flowers because, obviously, women can’t possibly drink anything unless it has been prettified like a five year old child’s bedroom. Urban Outfitters is selling T-shirts bearing the words “Too Hot to Work” – a sentiment I’m sure the suffragettes would have endorsed wholeheartedly.

I remember when Yorkie had to ditch its infamous “Not for Girls” slogan. I remember when girls’ fashion T‑shirts referenced Ruth Bader Ginsburg. That was a different era of marketing, when 2010s girlboss feminism still reigned. Today it has swung in the other direction. It’s all pink ribbons and “hot girl” culture. This sugary, condescending version of femininity is now so deeply entwined with consumerism that it’s almost impossible to separate the two. 

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What’s the actual problem here? Sky missed the mark, certainly. Brands are jumping on trends, as they always have. But the bigger issue is the rise of internet-driven femininity that feels increasingly… childish.

A year ago I wrote a piece for a student magazine arguing that 21st-century feminism was being dumbed down and pinkwashed. Phrases like “hot girl walk” (go for a walk and buy a coffee), “girl dinner” (eat something small), and “girl math” (you can only do sums when it involves shopping) abounded. 

Women willingly captioned things with “I’m just a girl” whenever faced with a mildly challenging task. Equating feminism with almond croissants and ditsiness isn’t just annoying and banal, it has actively nudged us backwards into the very stereotypes that used to be used to stop us voting. 

And all the while, young women are being served endless posts of tradwife mothers living on picturesque farms and captions such as: “Can you believe they convinced us an office job should be our dream?” Influencers post videos of their boyfriends bragging about being their human calculators and dictionaries. 

Does it really need pointing out to them that it suits the interests of radicalised right-wing groups to tell women they need to rely on a man? That they shouldn’t get a job, that all they’re good for is being pretty?

I’m not suggesting Halo will lead to The Handmaid’s Tale. I doubt the executives behind it intended anything sinister. They probably thought they were being fun, relatable, and tuned in to what young women want. But that’s exactly the problem. Big companies keep mistaking a narrow, infantilised online aesthetic for universal female identity. They then build entire marketing strategies around it.

Women already enjoy sports – they don’t need them colour-coded. They don’t need gendered soft drinks. Media shapes the world we imagine, and what emboldens female fans is normalisation, not pink glitter. 

I live next to a park where primary-school boys and girls play football together, wearing kits with male and female players’ names. That is empowerment. That is what makes young fans feel included. Remove the gender lines, don’t daub them on with neon pink paint.