Racy rugby lingerie campaign branded sexist and regressive
A campaign intended to show women can be both strong and beautiful has backfired, sparking an online outcry.
A lingerie campaign featuring female Olympic rugby stars has been branded “sexist” and “regressive” after its supposedly empowering message backfired.
The “Strong Is Beautiful” campaign for London-based underwear brand Bluebella featured Team GB athletes Celia Quansah, Ellie Boatman and Jasmin Joyce.
Photos and footage showed the trio, who are due to compete at the Paris Olympics, leaping and tossing a ball around while wearing nothing more than lingerie, socks and rugby boots.
Bluebella’s website said the images were intended to highlight female strength, dedication and commitment, and to challenge the idea that "strength and femininity are mutually exclusive".
However, the stunt sparked an online backlash from women and activists. One wrote on X: “This isn't a campaign to get girls into sports, it's a campaign to sell lingerie by a lingerie brand.”
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Another added: “So women are only beautiful if they’re wearing their underwear? What year is this?!”
Bluebella’s website highlighted the findings of a 2022 survey by Women in Sport, which showed that almost half of girls drop out of sport after age 13 and girls were three times more likely to give it up than boys.
However, Women in Sport said it was “very uncomfortable that we have been mentioned in this campaign without our knowledge”.
The charity’s chief executive, Stephanie Hilborne, told the Daily Express: “We don't believe sexy lingerie and discussions about teenage girls dropping out of sport should be in the same campaign.
“This ultimately won’t inspire girls to stay in sport. Girls don’t need to be told to look pretty on the pitch, they need brands to showcase their strength, resilience, skill and what they are capable of.”
Ms Hilborne said elite female athletes should be better paid “so they don’t feel the need to supplement their incomes”.
She added: “Right now, we need to get behind these amazing athletes, who deserve to be celebrated and cheered on during the Olympics.”
Other Olympians also expressed frustration. Swimmer Sharron Davies described the images as “extremely regressive…stereotypes yet again”.
She added: “This is an utterly shameful campaign, whose brain dead idea was this?"
Marathon runner Mara Yamauchi said: "This is exploitative, demeaning, sexist, regressive rubbish.
“Portraying women as sex objects will not encourage teenage girls into sport.”
Bluebella has a history of partnering with female athletes. A similar 2021 campaign featured synchronised swimmers Kate Shortman and Izzy Thorpe posing underwater in lingerie.
A British Olympic Association spokesperson said: “Neither Team GB nor GB Sevens are involved or affiliated in any way with Bluebella’s #StrongIsBeautiful campaign.”
A Bluebella spokesperson said: "We have been running the Strong Is Beautiful campaign for nine years, with the aim to celebrate and normalise strong female bodies that are traditionally ignored by the lingerie industry.
Rugby's image as an old boys' club may play a role in this PR disaster, writes MARK BORKOWSKI
This is the latest example of the PR troubles that have dogged the sport of rugby for some time now.
The game’s chiefs have struggled unsuccessfully for years to expand globally; a recent example is their partnership with Netflix on a Six Nations documentary that resolutely failed to make a comparable impact to the one Drive to Survive made for Formula 1.
Conversely, women’s rugby is a sport on the up, with a competitive, professional game that is growing in every continent.
It’s also worth noting that the GB Sevens project has also been particularly badly managed, with the men’s team, starved of resources, failing to qualify for the Olympics.
That might partly explain why there have been no corresponding photos of male GB Sevens players in their underwear.
Some of the factors above may have helped fuel the outrage that has greeted this ad, but the main reason for the backlash is the perception that rugby is a sport run by middle aged white men in blazers, which makes it easier to presume that any depiction of women in lingerie used to promote it is leary and sexualising.
The negative reaction is ultimately the symptom of the sporting body’s wider failure to shake off this image and engage positively with new and wider audiences.
However, as for the images themselves, a couple of women whose views I trust found them to be empowering, rather than sexualising, and that the photos were taken for the ‘female gaze’.
It may be that an earnest attempt to empower women athletes has backfired partly because of the baggage that comes with rugby’s image as an old boys’ club.
- Mark Borkowski is founder of Borkowski PR
