Reebok to women: Get the body that men want
|
posted by Sports, Media & Society Marie Hardin, associate director of the Center for Sports Journalism at Penn State University, takes a look at the interaction of sports coverage and U.S. culture. |
|
|
In a new series of provocative ads, Reebok tells women in no uncertain terms what other apparel companies often only suggest under the guise of empowerment: that exercising in the company’s new shoe will make them more sexually desirable to men. One features only a shot of a woman’s breasts “talking” about the woman’s now toned backside -- which came courtesy of the shoes. The slogan: “Make your boobs jealous.” Another features a woman talking about the shoes, only to have the camera leave her face when she bends over to lace them up and pan down to her backside, akin to a pair of roving male eyes. Focusing only on a woman’s breasts, or positioning the camera to resemble wandering eyes are what media scholars call the camera’s “male gaze,” a concept that suggests patriarchal power relationships are reproduced through mediated images.
In Reebok’s ads, women are reduced to a series of body parts and rewarded for appealing to the camera’s eye. The (male) camera tells women that exercising will make them objects of male desire. When women began playing organized sports in the early 1900s, critics said sports made women too manly; today Reebok tells women that exercise will make them more desirable. The message may be slightly different, but the end goal of appealing to men is the same. These new Reebok ads, then, are nothing new at all. Rather, they are part of a centuries-old narrative that polices women’s bodies to the benefit and pleasure of men, while denying women a space to find their own motivation for engaging in sports and other forms of exercise.
View Original Post at sportsmediasociety.blogspot.com
|
|
|
- Filed Under:
- SportsPLUS, OpEd, Media/Marketing
There are 7 comments on this post. Join the discussion!
stephaniemp
http://www.dove.us/#/features/videos/default.aspx[cp-documentid=7049579]/
robm
So far nothing is amiss. But Stephanie has apprehended the problem. To find it one must look at the beauty vs athleticism dichotomy women are forced to navigate. Whereas the man who builds a strong, athletically potent body is seen as attractive, the woman who does so is likely to find herself regarded as unattractive.
LHiggs
ken
robm
Also, it is quite wrong of you to suggest that I have in no way considered gender and sexual orientation, and how they relate to power in our society; clearly that is not the case. I'm mindful, in fact, of those and other factors--like race and class, neither of which are much accounted for in the assumptions made in the OP or your comments.
stephaniemp
robm
True, we live in a predominately heterosexual society; thus market forces alone dictate that most such ads have heterosexual women and men in mind. But that certainly doesn't rule out other possibilities, and it's not as though gay women and men are all of a piece uninterested in athletic bodies.
http://www.afterellen.com/node/26763
The targeted demographic, remember, isn't the viewer (aka the camera), it is in fact the woman who might buy the shoes. So, does it matter who she plans to attract with the "toned"
physique the shoe manufacturer promises her? No, of course not.
But there is a problem, the nub of which you have touched on twice now: "it is the mannor in which the directors showcased this women as parts (ie. butt and legs), not as strong attractive athlete"