Victoria’s Secret now has a line of workout clothes for
women. This advertisement is for a sports bra that’s good both in and outside
of the gym. In the column’s description of the bra, the model’s love for boxing
and strength-training is addressed briefly, but more importantly they drive
home the point that this bra is good to wear around outside of the realm of
sport. The intended meaning of this ad, in my opinion, is to show girls that
sporty is still pretty and skinny. As addressed in chapter 6 of Qualifying
Times, it is the goal of many to get women to participate in sports wearing
more feminine clothes. This is to sexualize the woman so that there is a larger
audience watching/backing their sport participation as well as placing more control
over the homophobia associated with women in sport (Schultz, pg 156). Most
people associate women in the gym as being too tall, muscular, and manly. This
ad shows quite the opposite – the model is very feminine, tiny, and beautiful
by the world’s standards; her ribs and hip bones are sticking out, and her
biceps are the size of her wrists.
It is clear that this model lacks strength, muscle,
and manliness, yet still is “sporty” because of the bra she is wearing. I believe
this ad portrays a message that women in the athletic world should still be
tiny, cute, feminine, and skinny. This ties along with Schultz’s mention of
ponytails equating to being feminine in sports. “The ponytail’s ‘cuteness’
speaks to dimensions of gender and age in the context of women’s sports…” she
writes in her introduction to Qualifying Times (Schultz, pg 2). A woman in a
sport should wear a ponytail to nicely present herself as girly, cute, and
youthful; just as a woman wearing this bra is to present herself as girly,
skinny, and pretty by society’s standards. It’s one thing to model the norm of
what a woman should look like outside of sport, but bringing this same expectation
of appearance into sport makes it virtually impossible for women to be both
feminine and truly athletic. Women who are athletic have muscle to their bodies,
and generally don’t have ribs and hip bones that stick out. This ad implies more
broadly/unintentionally that women who are in sport should still be extremely feminine,
delicate, and I would even argue frail looking due to the complete absence of
muscle in this photo. This advertisement says that women in sport, women who
wear this sports bra, are not strong. They are beautiful, desirable, and
skinny. This ad definitely taps into cultural norms as to what women should
look like. There is a lot of anxiety about women who have muscle and appear
more manly, because these attributes go against cultural norms. I really don’t
like this ad at all if I’m being completely honest. I think it makes women in the
sports realm seem pathetic and wimpy, just desirable because they’re tiny and cute.
I would like to see a woman who vigorously works and trains for her sport modeling
this sports bra, not a woman who just represents the feminine ideal outside of
sport.
This advertisement was from a news/pop culture column called
Self.
Additional References
J. Schultz. (2014). Qualifying times: points of
change in US Women's Sport. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
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