Research shows that women are 10X more likely than men to be objectified in sports. All too often, media cameras covering female athletes have zoomed in with impunity to their breasts, buttocks, thighs and crotches. This has been going on for decades.

Sexist media camera angles aimed at women at sports events not only objectifies them, but also disrespects their skills and achievements. It also perpetuates objectification of women in everyday life. LUX felt that it was time to call out this insidious practice before it becomes normalized.

Beauty brand LUX stands with women against everyday sexism. We wanted to call attention to this issue and change the angle of sexist media cameras with actionable guidelines.

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Women in sports are 10 times more likely to be objectified by camera angles that focus on certain body parts compared to their male counterparts. When we found out that this is also an issue for top female athletes who have achieved incredible things, we knew we had to act. This doesn’t only devalue the female athletes’ professional performance and achievements, but also perpetuates the objectification issue many women face every day.”

Severine Vauleon

Global Brand Vice President of LUX

Research shows that women are 10X more likely than men to be objectified in sports. Sexist media camera angles aimed at women at sports events not only objectify them, but also disrespect their skills and achievements.

This creates a vicious circle as it perpetuates objectification of women in everyday life as well.

One of the main culprits of objectification is media cameras – which deliberately focus on the women’s breasts,buttocks, thighs and
crotches.

We played the media cameras at their own game by hacking a live broadcast of the Durban Open Beach Volleyball 2023 tournament where the female athletes wore QR codes on parts of their bodies where media
cameras tend to focus.

Change The Angle received 4.7 billion impressions and was picked by more than 377 publications worldwide, including BBC, Yahoo, Telegraph, Washington Daily News and Boston Herald among others. These articles have also been viewed 1.54 million times so far.

The campaign generated $500,000 in earned media.

Significantly, South Africa’s biggest broadcast network*, South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) has adopted Change The Angle guidelines.

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