Why You (As a Woman) Should Hate Ads

Ads are annoying. Every time you want to see a funny video, play a game or consume any form of digital media, an ad pops up. You try to click away but there’s no use, you know they’re not going to go away. You hate ads because they’re inconvenient, but what if I told you that I could give you a valid reason to hate them? What if I told you that these reasons would be even more relevant as a woman? Hopefully, you’d be happy since you could express more anger toward ads and have a genuine reason for it. Ads, particularly fitness ads for women, are ineffective because of the way products or ideas are presented.

Researchers created a focus group made up of female athletes participating in various top-level college sports for their opinion on a sample of ads belonging to assigned categories. These categories were male-dominated fitness advertisements, sports advertising targeted towards women, fitness advertising, and female athletes in advertising. In most cases, women couldn’t relate to the messages presented. Why? They thought the messages in these ads were off or not presented well.

Fitness and sports ads tend to focus on women’s appearances. Whether it be clothes or their body types, these ads tell them they need to look a certain way. There is no middle ground between telling women they need to care about how they look while working out or appealing to women who have been heavily working out for years. This alienates women and can discourage them. 

The athletes also couldn’t relate to most ads that used models. For example, the study showed the athletes an ad where a model was performing an abdominal exercise. However, the athletes felt that the ad had less emphasis on the idea of working out and more emphasis on creating a sexualized image. Some of the comments coming from the focus group on the ad were that it “seems to promote sex appeal more than the personal desire to better yourself” and it “was a little too ‘modely’ to seem athletic.” The athletes felt that this ad was more for men to look at and could not relate to it. It also felt unrealistic and promoted impossible standards for women. 

There is a lack of diversity in body types in advertisements. They often feature tiny, fit, skinny women. In reality, there is a lot of diversity in female athlete’s body types depending on what sports they’re participating in. One athlete even stated that “track has so many different body types within one team. You’ve got the distance girls, who are tiny, but you’ve also got the throwers who are so strong…. They don’t depict that in ads though.” This creates the belief that female athletes are only successful if they have a specific, usually unattainable, body type. It limits female athletes to their bodies and formulates the idea that their bodies are their focus. 

The reality is that their bodies are supposed to be a tool for them to perform at their maximum potential in their sport, not the other way around. Because of the male dominated lens used in advertising, unrealistic ads targeted towards female athletes create false ideas of what women are supposed to look like.  

Gallagher, Jenny. “Psychological Effects of Fitness Advertising on Female Collegiate Athletes.” Elon Journal of Undergraduate Research in Communications 6.2 (2015). <http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/a?id=1359>