Caleb Williams, painted nails and the insults that ricochet at female football fans

I’m a woman in sports media. On social media, I’ve been told to go back to the kitchen and make a sandwich more often than I can count (and even then, it’s been far less common for me than big names in the industry). It comes with the territory. It still sucks. Being a woman in sports, whether as media or a fan, is like playing Minesweeper. Most buttons you click on are harmless. Others are bombs.

Watching Caleb Williams play football in the NFL is one of my favorite things to do. He’s magic. He does the impossible. Watching Caleb Williams is also like playing Minesweeper on a board with more bombs than safe spots. Because Caleb Williams likes fashion and paints his nails. And isn’t that such an “insufferably feminine” sin.

The sad response to Caleb Williams beating the Green Bay Packers

On Saturday, football fans watched Williams and the Bears flip an 18-point deficit. The quarterback was electric in the waning minutes of the game, pulling off throws that most QBs couldn’t dream of completing. He brought Chicago their first playoff win in 15 years in the most unforgettable way possible, keeping them alive to go after a second. He boiled first-half fury into second-half iciness, his clutch gene coming to life. And even then, the fact that he had painted nails was thrown around as an insult.

Lil Wayne tweeted, “We just loss a playoff game to a ***** w purple nails.”

Grenades don’t just impact the target they’re lobbed at. They create a blast radius impacting anyone within the circle. Insults work that way too. I’d like to think I’ve built thick skin at this point in my life, but I’ll be honest: Seeing comments like painted nails being “insufferably feminine” still stops me in my tracks. Because when people put down Williams for his perceived femininity, aren’t they casting the femininity of every female sports fan as weakness?

In the NFL right now, an influx of Swifties has given fathers and daughters a chance to bond over football. At the same time, one of the sport’s brightest young stars is accused of being “girly” on a weekly basis. There’s something wrong with this picture.

Things Caleb Williams and I have in common: Nails and mothers

I am and always have been the definition of a Tom Boy. The only girl in a family with four brothers, I gravitated towards the clothes, toys and activities favored by my siblings. I loved swords and guns and playing sports. I disliked dresses, princesses and shopping. There was really only one “girly” thing that I enjoyed as a teen — painting my nails.

The whole painted nails thing was actually an offshoot of my love of sports. What better way to represent your team than wearing their colors on your nails? I even did it for teams I wasn’t a dedicated fan of. Every year for the Super Bowl, I’d go out and buy nail polish in the color of the team I was rooting for and paint it on ahead of the big game.

Nails were also one of the few feminine things I got to share with my mom, who had long since given up dressing me in pink or putting baubles in my hair. We’d go to get manicures and pedicures together. It was our mother-daughter time.

That’s something I have in common with Williams. His mother is a nail technician and she’s the one who paints his nails. He wears them proudly in honor of her. It’s their mother-son thing.

Caleb Williams cares, is that too feminine too?

Sometimes Williams uses his nail polish for competitive messages or curses aimed at the other team. He’s also used them to send important mental health messages, including suicide prevention. In 2025, he started the season by displaying 988, the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline number, on his nails.

Williams has never revealed a personal connection to suicide. That’s something else we might have in common. I’ve never had someone important to me take their own life…I’ve just lived in fear of it.

The night I found out my little brother was gay, I cried myself to sleep. It wasn’t because I didn’t accept him. Of course, I did. Without hesitation. It was because I was scared for him. LGBTQ youths have a suicide rate far higher than the general population. Coming from a deeply religious family, one with a deep-seated history of depression, I knew what kind of fear, pain and shame he must have been shouldering all those years.

And now in an NFL that still has only ever had one openly gay player, I can only imagine what kind of impact the constant insults aimed at Williams’ sexuality must have on LGBTQ fans and players. As though displaying any hint of “femininity” makes you a liability and worthy of scorn. All it takes is one wrong insult on the wrong day to drive someone beyond the point of no return.

So Caleb Williams matters to me, not just because I’m a USC fan and he gave me thrills every Saturday for two years. And not just because I’m a football fan and he keeps giving me reasons to drop my jaw and exclaim “NO WAY.” It’s because he’s a representative of so many things that matter to me. He operates in a masculine landscape and doesn’t let that stop him expressing the parts of himself that don’t fit the “manly football” mold. He has a connection with his mother that feels so relatable. And he’s committed to helping those who are struggling with mental health — not just with the symbolic painting of nails but with a foundation dedicated to empowering kids against bullying and cruelty. It’s fitting then, that Williams is the subject of both in NFL circles.

I just wish fans recognized the potential impact of their words. Most of the time, I forget about the “other” status that being a woman in the world of sports places on me. I’m just a person behind a keyboard or camera talking about sports like everyone else. Until someone reminds me that, in this world, my gender may be perceived as lesser. That femininity can become code for weakness.

For now, all I can do is respond like Caleb does.

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