This Girl Can(’t): A Risk of Subjectification and Self-Surveillance in Sport England’s Behavioral Change Campaign

Abstract

We examine the potential unforeseen consequences from Sport England’s This Girl Can (2015) promotion program, specifically arguing that the campaign videos released in 2015 and 2017 take the previously narrow heteronormative gaze of desire, and inclusively apply it to all women, suggesting empowerment where there is only sexual subjectification. Overall, what prevails is a campaign that presents the female body – historically a locus of social control – as a body-as-object, despite being ‘in process’, and suggesting the attributes of female sexualisation – hips, lips, butts and breasts – are essential to attention and visibility, rather than action, movement, fitness or strength. Thus, it is the sexualisation of women posited as essential to agency and action that muddies a campaign of intended empowerment into being one of subjectification and self-surveillance.

Keywords:

• social marketing
• Gender < Identity
• sexualisation
• feminism
• Sport < Leisure