Analysis of "This Girl Can" Campaign Representation
The "This Girl Can" campaign aims to address the gender inequality in sports media coverage by presenting a more inclusive and empowering image of women in sports. This analysis examines various aspects of representation within the campaign.
Gender Representation:
The campaign focuses on rebalancing the historical over-representation of men in mainstream sports media. By prominently featuring women in the main image, it challenges traditional stereotypes and provides positive role models for female audiences.
Highlight: The campaign showcases confident, proud, and independent women that female viewers can identify with, subverting historical stereotypes of women in sports.
Body Image:
Unlike many mainstream media representations, the campaign features women with average body types engaged in sports activities. This approach counters unrealistic beauty ideals and promotes a more inclusive view of women's bodies in athletics.
Example: The main image shows a woman with visible arms and shoulders, presented in a non-sexualized manner that avoids the male gaze typically found in sports media.
Campaign Branding:
The use of "girl" in the campaign name is a deliberate choice that both challenges and plays with stereotypes.
Vocabulary: "Throw like a girl" is a phrase often used to mock or belittle female athletic ability. The campaign reclaims this language to empower women.
However, the term "girl" may have negative connotations for some and potentially alienate older women from the campaign's message.
Ethnic Representation:
While the campaign features a diverse range of ethnicities across its materials, the main image in this particular advertisement showcases a white model. This reflects the ongoing dominance of white ethnicities in mainstream media representations of women in sports.
Highlight: The 2015 campaign message reached a broad female audience by featuring a diverse range of ethnicities throughout its materials.
Age Representation:
The campaign attempts to appeal to a wide age range, featuring models from different age groups:
- Main model: 25-35 years old
- Background model: 45+ years old
- Additional representation: 60+ and 16-25 age groups
This diverse age representation aims to persuade women of all ages that they can see themselves in the campaign characters.
Quote: "Optimistic, positive representation of youth → persuades women target audience of all ages."
Conclusion:
The "This Girl Can" campaign makes significant strides in addressing gender disparities in sports media coverage. By presenting diverse, confident, and relatable images of women in sports, it challenges traditional stereotypes and promotes a more inclusive vision of female athleticism. However, there is still room for improvement, particularly in ethnic representation and potentially in the use of age-inclusive language.
