Adidas sports bras bare breasts

The controversial sports bra ad is daring – in the very best sense of the word. It's inclusive and diverse and celebrates how different our breasts can be.

But the representation present in Adidas’ sports bra ad is important. Adidas’ sports bra ad is daring in the very best sense of the word. Male chests are uncensored across media and advertising, nips and all, but the female nipple is still considered too shocking for Instagram. People (usually men, let’s be honest) still get weird about breastfeeding in public spaces. If I’m looking for a high impact, supportive sports bra, I want to know that the brand has people with boobs outside of the compact, high-set ideal in mind. The Adidas ad feels joyful to me. Some who complained about the ad believed it sexualised women and “reduced them to body parts”.

The advert for sports bras was deemed to have a likelihood to cause widespread offence.

We concluded that (the posters) were inappropriately targeted, and were likely to cause widespread offence.” Which is why our new sports bra range contains 43 styles, so everyone can find the right fit for them.” The ASA said: “Although we did not consider that the way the women were portrayed was sexually explicit or objectified them, we considered that the depiction of naked breasts was likely to be seen as explicit nudity.

A tweet of 25 pairs of breasts has landed Adidas with an ad ban from the UK watchdog after complaints it was “gratuitous” and inappropriate for children.

Off the back of that advice, Adidas avoided locations near schools and religious sites. In its defense, Adidas UK said the images were not gratuitous and were instead intended to “reflect and celebrate different shapes and sizes, illustrate the diversity and demonstrate why tailored support bras were important”. It also rebuffed the claim the ads were sexual, stating they intended to show breasts “simply as a part of a woman’s body”. The Drum at the time asked female marketers for their opinions, with many dismissing the ads as “sensationalist clickbait”. One creative director, Nathalie Gordon of The Or, told The Drum: “How sad is it that in a world where a brand is genuinely doing good, instead of showing the product doing good, it needs to use naked female bodies to garner attention?”

The advert for sports bras was deemed to have a likelihood to cause widespread offence.

We concluded that (the posters) were inappropriately targeted, and were likely to cause widespread offence.” Which is why our new sports bra range contains 43 styles, so everyone can find the right fit for them.” The ASA said: “Although we did not consider that the way the women were portrayed was sexually explicit or objectified them, we considered that the depiction of naked breasts was likely to be seen as explicit nudity.