Live Volleyball Game Is Intervened To Call Out Hypersexualized Angles Of Women

With more efforts to level the playing field, people are beginning to normalize women in sports. However, this advance comes with a less ideal outcome—in showcasing female athletes, broadcasters are also objectifying them.

A study found that women are 10 times more likely than male athletes to be “visually objectified” at sporting events, with cameras fixated on their chests and buttocks instead of their performance. There were also 2,500 images reported to have sexualized women at the 2021 Summer Olympics alone. Naturally, subjects end up feeling extremely self-conscious by the unwanted attention on their bodies.

LUX—a Unilever beauty and bath product brand primarily marketed in South Asia, Brazil, Thailand, and South Africa—has taken to a live beach volleyball game in Durban, South Africa, to expose the serial objectification of female athletes in a counterintuitive way: by plastering PSAs on the same, invasive positions that the cameras tend to point at.

The “hacking” saw QR codes printed on the sports bras and shorts of volleyball players as they played at the Durban Open, a tournament that purportedly drew an viewership of 19.7 million in South Africa during its run on April 15 and 16.

Viewers who scanned the QR codes were led to this insightful video:

The campaign, a collaboration with advertising agency Wunderman Thompson Singapore, Volleyball SA (South Africa), and sports channel SABC, urges broadcasters and audiences to Change the Angle to counter everyday sexism. The initiative’s creators felt beach volleyball was the perfect sport to highlight sexist camera angles, as athletes in this field often have to dress minimally to move freely under the sun.

It goes without saying that the leering doesn’t stop at sports. LUX is hoping its hijacking of the game will be the first step of an important conversation that affects women around the world.

[via Adland and gsport4girls, images via various sources]