Be more human. Is Reebok breaking women’s boundaries in sports?

Abstract

Modern sports have increasingly acquired more social relevance, amplified as it is by the media and, especially, advertising, thereby making sports closer than ever to the average citizen. In 2015 the sports brand Reebok initiated a campaign to promote fitness by highlighting and valuing the human side of sports. The objective of this study is to analyze this campaign, assessing the existence of sexist prejudices, if any. Content analysis has been chosen as the method of study. A total of 439 images uploaded by Instagram users between January 2015 and May 2016 that were employed in Reebok’s campaign have been evaluated. The results indicate that photos of single, thin, and white women predominate. We can conclude that although the photos in Reebok’s campaign portray women in attitudes contrary to what sexist prejudices dictate – e.g. sweaty, tired – there is a clear adjustment to the canons of beauty that have traditionally been projected onto women.

Keywords:

• Selfie
• social media
• advertising
• branding
• femininity
• sports

Disclosure statement

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest concerning the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Additional information

Funding

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.