This Girl Can('t)? Campaign simply reworks 'sex sells' approach
- Written by Laura McVey, Senior Researcher, Centre for Employee and Consumer Wellbeing, Deakin University
Sport England is to partner with VicHealth for a social marketing campaign to encourage women to participate in sport based on its This Girl Can campaign. However, beyond the campaign’s initial “feel-good” nature, this news may not be as totally positive as it seems.
In its attempt to motivate and empower women, the campaign material may unintentionally work with entrenched norms of sexualising women to perpetuate their self-objectification. This is likely not only to be detrimental to their mental and physical health, but also to further their commodification in society.
Further reading: Sexualised girls are seen as less intelligent and less worthy
The origins of This Girl Can
In 2015, Sport England launched This Girl Can to encourage women to be more active, regardless of body type or age. The mainstream and social media response was positive, and the campaign has received significant global attention for its “Just Do It” style of messaging.
The aim was to bridge the gender gap in sport participation. Two million more British men than women were playing sport or exercising regularly. Yet 75% of women say they want to be more active.
Many have debated the campaign’s likely effect on women. But what’s clear is that This Girl Can is an example of the continuing power of hegemonic discipline over women’s bodies and self-conception.
Commercial marketing has always used this commodification of women. But its use in a campaign aimed at empowering women should be of concern.
Further reading: There’s a world of difference between sex and sexism in advertising
What’s the problem?
NikeThe romanticisation of women who are “just doing it” has long been used to sell women’s sportswear. This ideology is now reaching a crescendo.
In the This Girl Can advertisement, simulated hypersexuality is posited as essential to agency and action. This turns a laudably intended campaign of empowerment into one of sexual subjectification and self-surveillance.
The “male gaze” – depicting women and the world from a male point of view – has cemented itself as a staple in advertising, including sports campaigns. What is telling in the This Girl Can campaign is the way in which this male gaze has become an internalised self-perception.
Another point of distinction in this campaign is a shift from women’s sexualised bodies presented as passive, mute objects of a male gaze to active, desiring sexual subjects. They are women who choose to present themselves in a seemingly objectified manner because it is in their (implicitly “liberated”) self-interest.
The likelihood of women internalising their agency as directly linked to their sexual capital is highly related to how normalised this is. Research has found that as group identification increases, a person becomes increasingly likely to adopt that group’s behavioural norms. Considering the campaign’s viral status, this is an important consideration.
The exposure of bodies is central to the campaign’s intended message of body confidence and erasing fears of judgement. But, far from what many headlines would have you believe, this campaign is not revolutionary in its construction of women.
Being “confident”, “carefree” and “unconcerned about one’s appearance” are now central aspects of femininity – even as they exist alongside injunctions to meet impossibly high standards of beauty.
So, although we should rejoice at the portrayal of “normal” bodies in this and other campaigns, the same objectification of women is at play. Even when showing women’s bodies in action, rather than focusing on the traits of health, agility and co-ordination, the campaign ad frames the female body as an object.
The focus is on women’s buttocks, faces, hips and chests, the sexualised movements of twerking, “wobbling”, hip shaking and heavy breathing, and taglines such as “Hot, and not bothered” and “Sweating like a pig, feeling like a fox”.
Authors: Laura McVey, Senior Researcher, Centre for Employee and Consumer Wellbeing, Deakin University
Read more http://theconversation.com/this-girl-can-t-campaign-simply-reworks-sex-sells-approach-81609