Interrogating the Presentation of Gender in Sports Advertising

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FAcq_jvmXDo


This is Nike's "Just Do It" 25th Anniversary commercial that aired last year, kind of for all Nike products in general. It features both male and female athletes, and it also includes famous athletes as well as everyday athletes. After watching the commercial, I felt like the messages about gendered identities, roles, and relations were present but extremely subtle. I've seen many commercials that were extremely obvious in their use of stereotypical depictions of male and female athletes. I can see that Nike made a conscious effort to include a female athletes, both famous and not famous. Also, the commercial included a variety of sports, including running,  bullriding, dancing, BMX, soccer, wrestling, football, boxing, basketball, table tennis, dancing, and tennis. Famous athletes featured included Lebron James, Andre Ward, Gerard Pique, and Serena Williams.

Of all the sports featured in the commercial, all the athletes featured fell into the stereotypical "male" or "female" sports we discussed in class: the men were featured bullriding, participating in BMX, playing soccer, throwing a football, wrestling, and boxing. The female athletes were either running, playing table tennis, or dancing/cheerleading (Serena Williams is the exception). This implies that there was no female athlete that was good enough or famous enough to be featured for one of these male-dominated sports (even though there are many professional female soccer and basketball players).

Besides Serena Williams, the females in the commercial were marathon running, cheerleading, or dancing on the beach. Traditionally these are "accepted" forms of physical activity for females.
The main point of the commercial is that if you "just do it," you can beat a famous athlete at his or her own sport (which might be kind of a stretch). All of the famous male athletes are unnamed, with Bradley Cooper's narration simply stating: "pick on him," or "beat that guy." It's assumed that if you have Nike products you probably already know who Lebron James is when you see his face. When the narration is talking about the female amateur table tennis player, he says, "beat Serena" just in case you don't know who the famous female athlete is, but Serena Williams doesn't even play the same sport. Table tennis and tennis are different sports, but they're equated as the same in this commercial, which is weird. Also, when the female runner is being featured, the narrator tells her to run faster than a movie star (Chris Pine). This doesn't even make sense to me, because for all the male amateur athletes featured, they were set up against famous athletes doing the sport that the amateurs did. For the female athletes featured, it felt like Serena Williams was just chosen because she was the most famous female athlete they could find. Also, she's featured wearing a full pink outfit, including skirt and pink headband (as if we have to be reminded that even though she's very muscular and a great athlete, she's female).

 The stereotypical depiction of men and women in advertisements is problematic because studies have shown that "repeated exposure to selective portrayals" of gender groups can lead to viewers adopting distorted beliefs about those groups (Rubie-Davies, 2013). Although subtle, the commercial highlighted that if you're a female athlete, there are certain acceptable forms of athletics that are acceptable, including running, cheer/dance, and maybe table tennis. Also, you probably aren't good enough to face other athletes, but you might be more athletic than other "regular" people. Not seeing any females portrayed in media playing "big" male sports like bullriding, soccer, wrestling, and boxing discourages amateur athletes from participating or even thinking about participating in a traditionally male sport. Also, by not even mentioning the names of the famous male athletes reflects that if you follow sports or buy Nike products, you should be able to identify the most famous male athletes in sports, but it's acceptable if you don't know champion female athletes like Serena.


References:
Rubie-Davies, C. M., Liu, S., & Lee, K. K. (2013). Watching Each Other: Portrayals of Gender and Ethnicity in Television Advertisements. Journal Of Social Psychology, 153(2), 175-195.