Haters Say This Ad Campaign Is 'Regressive,' But I Say Let The Olympians Wear Lingerie
There's a controversy brewing ahead of the Paris Olympics, and I'm not talking about poop in the Seine River. Nope, this one is all about rugby players and their right to wear sexy panties.
Seriously.
Bluebella — a UK-based lingerie company — has partnered with three players from Great Britain's women's rugby team for their "Strong Is Beautiful" campaign ahead of this year's Games. Images from the campaign show Celia Quansah, Ellie Boatman and Jasmine Joyce decked out in skimpy bras, panties and teddies, tossing around a rugby ball on the pitch.
According to Bluebella, the ads aim to highlight the beauty of women with athletic bodies, which "have historically been ignored by the fashion industry and stigmatized by society." They are also designed to highlight the startling number of young girls who drop out of sports because of body image issues.
"I think one of the biggest challenges for women’s rugby is people’s perception that you can’t be feminine and play rugby, that one comes up frequently," Quansah said about why she chose to participate. "People love to say women shouldn’t play rugby or you’re too pretty to play rugby and all of those things that just aren’t true."
But the campaign has put some people's panties in a twist. (See what I did there?)
Empowering Or Sexist?
Although Bluebella has been running this campaign for nine years now, this collaboration with three Olympic rugby players has sparked an inordinate amount of backlash from people arguing that "sexualizing" the athletes is "regressive" and insulting to women.
"This is exactly what young girls do not need to see," read one comment on Instagram. "Instead of empowering women in sport, we once again see this profit the male gaze and continue the objectification and sexualisation of the female body."
Another added: "It’s okay to play sports because you can still be sexy? NO. What an insulting campaign. Women do not need to be sexy to be worth something."
Former Olympic distance runner Mara Yamauchi dubbed the campaign "exploitative, demeaning, sexist, regressive rubbish," according to The Telegraph.
And even tennis legend Martina Navratilova weighed in on X, calling the racy ads "regressive AF."
The pushback eventually prompted Team GB to issue a statement distancing itself from the campaign: "Neither Team GB nor GB Sevens are involved or affiliated in any way with Bluebella’s #StrongIsBeautiful campaign."
And finally, Women in Sports — a UK-based non-profit — swooped in to denounce the whole thing, too.
"We don’t need women to look pretty on the pitch. We need brands and the media to showcase their strength, resilience and skills," they said in a statement. "We need to break the confines which trap our girls as they grow up making their worlds smaller. We need to set our girls free."
Have any of these people ever seen a woman wear underwear before? Sheesh.
What Exactly Is The Problem Here?
The backlash against this campaign is completely baffling to me.
Sure, I understand the criticism, to a degree. Feminity is not synonymous with nudity or the ability to appeal to the male gaze. Women should never have to strip nearly naked in order to "prove" their worth. But that's not what's happening here.
As far as I know, Bluebella did not hold a gun to these rugby players' heads and force them to strip down to their skivvies. These fully grown adults chose to partner with the brand and consented to showing off their bodies for the campaign.
Lingerie ads show women wearing lingerie. That's kind of the point. Bluebella's Instagram page is full of all sorts of women doing exactly that. So what about these three women sent everyone into a tizzy? Is it because they are athletes?
That can't be it. Female athletes have been scantily clad in the media for decades. I don't see women's sports advocacy groups screeching about Livvy Dunne, Alex Morgan, Maria Sharapova or any of the countless females who have posed in Sports Illustrated over the years.
And they certainly don't seem to think it's "sexist" when a shirtless male athlete has his bulge popping out in a nothing-left-to-the-imagination Calvin Klein or a SKIMS ad.
It's almost as if their problem with Celia, Ellie and Jasmine is… the womens' body type. As if a strong and muscular physique somehow means they also can't express their feminity in a way that they, personally, find empowering.
"Regressive AF," right?
But that brings me to my next point.
All Women Wear Underwear
OK, I'm sure there are some who don't. But, generally speaking, most women wear bras and panties under their clothes.
Yet somehow, we keep finding ourselves in heated debates over who is allowed to appear in ladies' underwear ads — like last year when a bunch of dudes got personally offended that some Victoria's Secret models didn't meet their own standards of sexiness.
And I'm not referring to the transgender one. That's a whole different problem. I'm talking about the female models who didn't look like the anatomically gifted "VS Angels" of the past.
(Getty Images)
But, men, I need you to pay close attention to this part, and I'm going to say it slowly and gently…
Lingerie ads are not for you.
I'm sorry if that's hard to hear. But lingerie ads are not made for you — and that's despite whatever fond and intimate memories you have with the JCPenney catalog as a preteen boy.
You're (usually) not the ones buying it, and you're (hopefully) not the ones wearing it. So a good lingerie ad campaign caters to its actual target audience: women. And that means showing how the product looks on all sorts of women.
A lot of times when we talk about "different body types" or "body positivity," people assume that means glorifying obesity. That's not what we're talking about here. Because, y'all, there are a whole lot of "body types" that fall somewhere between Gisele and Lizzo. In fact, a vast majority of women you know fall into that category.
So we, as females, want to see ads that depict women who are short, tall, big butt, little butt, real boobs, fake boobs, muscular, skinny, post-partum… all the various shapes of all the various female bodies. And that's good practice for all clothing ads, not just the ones for bras and panties.
(Getty Images)
I'll use myself as an example: I'm a bodybuilder. So while I may not be Olympic-rugby-player jacked, I'm way more muscular than the average lady on the street. Sometimes that makes it difficult to find clothes that fit correctly. And to add insult to injury, I'm also short.
So if I'm online shopping (and, obviously, can't try anything on), it does me no good to see the clothes modeled ONLY on 5-foot-11, 115-pound, airbrushed supermodels. Those women look beautiful, of course, but I need to see how those pants fit on someone who's 5-foot-2 with a dump truck.
It's about practicality, not eye candy for guys.
That's why those ads exist. And that's why I freaking love what Bluebella is doing with women's rugby.
If you don't like it, don't look at it. And that goes for you too, Martina Navratilova.
Coming Up: How To Buy Lingerie For Your Wife/Girlfriend
Now that we've established that sexy underwear is for everyone, I'm going to consult some experts about how you can choose just the right kind for the special lady in your life — if she's into that sort of thing, that is.
And I'll give you a hint: Here's the wrong way to do it.
Plus, it's been a couple of weeks since I last answered emails on here, so we'll do an extended mailbag. Send your stories, questions, complaints and observations to Amber.Harding@outkick.com.
One More Thing
Congrats to this happy couple who got engaged in the mud while Limp Bizkit sang "Break Stuff."
Who says romance is dead?!
Womansplaining is a weekly column about dating, marriage, sex and relationships that runs on Wednesdays at noon ET.
Email your thoughts, questions, stories and gripes to Amber.Harding@OutKick.com or tweet her @TheAmberHarding.