Written evidence submitted by Professor Jessica Ringrose, University of Kent and
Dr Kaitlyn Regehr, University College London (MISS0026)

Executive Summary

In 2018, Professor Jessica Ringrose and Dr. Kaitlyn Regehr were commissioned by the Mayor of London to carry out a study, exploring how women experience gender in London’s out-of-home advertising.  ‘The Women We See’ research collected the stories of 16 women (aged 21-65) and 22 teen girls (14-16) from a range of backgrounds to explore how they experience advertising content. Young people created ‘craft back collages’ which responded to advertising and generated their own messages for change through collaging arts practices which are part of the evidence we present below. A quantitative survey also captured the views of 2,012 women and men on gender and diversity in advertising (see appendix for methodology).

Our report - ‘The Women We See: women, girls’ experiences of gender and diversity in advertising’ showed London advertising lacked diversity and created harmful, inaccurate and unhealthy stereotypes for women and men. Participants expressed an overall sense of failure of advertising to represent diversity in terms of race, ethnicity, religion, body shape, ability and age. Sexism and gender inequality including inaccurate sexualisation of women and girls’ bodies and photoshopping and idealizing of bodies was felt to create unhealthy images that could be harmful. This research focuses on the impact of out-of-home advertising and provides recommendations for advertisers on how to tackle this issue, but the recommendations are also relevant across all forms of advertising and we include evidence about targeted advertising on social media which was particularly problematic for teens in our study.

The recommendations are that advertisers and those in the creative industries tackle invisibility and exclusion of some groups, as well as inequitable gender and race stereotypes, by considering the intersecting issues of body size, age, ability, culture, religion, ethnicity, gender and sexuality shaping identities, and experiences. The findings are from the London region but are applicable beyond the metropolis.

Summary of Key Findings:

•    The most problematic advertising platforms were ranked in order of concern: online 35%, TV 13%, newspapers 8%, public spaces (i.e. billboards 8%), and public transport 7%.

•    Almost half (47%) think adverts on social media are more problematic than adverts in public places 21%.

•    Less than a third (27% Londoners) felt that adverts are relevant to them.

• Less than a quarter (22% of women and 23% of men) felt London adverts are culturally diverse.

•    Only 26% of women felt London’s adverts were relevant to them.

•    Only 18% of survey participants could ever recall having seen an advertisement with a disabled person.

•    Just over a third - 35% of LGBT Londoners felt represented in London advertising.

Key Body Image Findings:

In relation to body image, the survey found that the portrayal of idealized people (slim, white, heterosexual, able-bodied) in adverts means consumers feel there is a lack of representation of diverse body shapes and sizes

•    44% of Respondents felt that people of their own body shape are not represented in London adverts.

•    For both women (50%) and men (48%) of people who are worried about body image feel unrepresented in advertising.

•    Over half of respondents (52%) think that plus-size people are not represented enough in advertising.

•    40% think that when plus-size models are in adverts they are not representative of plus size clothes buyers.

What is the impact of these findings on multiple protected characteristics?

Racial Diversity

The lack of racial or religious diversity in advertising was felt keenly across the research study. 71% of Black Londoners said Black people are not well represented in London’s advertising; and 61% of British Asian/Asian Londoners felt there was an under-representation Asian communities. 36% of women said adverts had too many white people. Participants in the qualitative research noted similarly that advertisements they saw promoted ideals of white beauty as normal. Participants were concerned that hair and beauty products promoted ideals of white Western beauty, such as the issue of pressures around body hair waxing, particularly for dark skin, which came up repeatedly

Naomi talked about the erasure of other cultural norms:

in African cultures, a lot of African women tend to still keep a lot of their body hair, and some of them even have it on their chest or their chin… but advertisements don’t represent that. (Naomi, 36, Black British)

The teen girls also talked about extreme pressures to have Caucasia-style hair and to remove dark body hair.

I remember in primary school I really wanted to be like a blonde girl with straight hair…

That's true. I wanted to have lighter skin… when I got older I realised how messed up that was and actually I like my skin. But I feel like I saw no representation of Indian Women or anything. South Asian women, I felt like I was an outsider. (Janene, 14, Mixed Race & Daria, 14, West Indian).

Below is collaging art produced by the schoolgirls which draws dark hair on the models’ bodies and asks questions about why they cannot see natural black beauty represented.

Figure 1 and 2 – School Craft-back Art Projects

Mobility/(Dis)ability Diversity

Just 18% of survey participants could ever recall having seen an advertisement featuring a disabled person and 65% of women and 51% of men said they did not see enough images of disabled people. During the period of this study, we did not find any advertisements that reflected experiences of being disabled in London. Advertisements assume a healthy and able-bodied individual in ways that was understood as highly exclusionary by our differently abled participants.

Laura who uses a scooter was very concerned by that advertising was:

…still fixated on thinness and able-bodied [people]. (Laura, 29, White Irish, Wheelchair User)

Age Diversity

Age was also a significant factor in feeling ignored in advertising, especially for women: The group that felt the best represented were men aged 18-34, with two thirds (69%) saying they felt ‘very well’ or ‘fairly well’ represented. Whilst those that were feeling least represented were women over the age of 55, with 55% of women over 55 saying that they felt ‘fairly badly’ or ‘very badly’ represented.

Most people agree that older people are not represented enough in London adverts (54%). Less than 1 in 4 recall seeing London adverts with people that have wrinkles (26%).  Less than one in four participants recall seeing London adverts with people that have wrinkles. Older participants report feeling ‘invisible’ and ‘irrelevant’. As Linda explains:

Do we judge men by their faces? When men get grey that’s debonair, that’s sexy, look at [famous silver haired celebrity], he’s grey now but he’s still sexy. You know, but if his wife decided to go grey?  It’s very sad isn’t it…when you get to a certain age you become invisible. (Linda, 65, White British)

Gender and Sexual Orientation Diversity

Individuals from the gay and lesbian community felt unrepresented and excluded. The lack of representation of gender and sexual diversity or gender neutrality was noted by several participants.

Julie said she would love to see more representations of the LGBT community in advertisements in London: 

I'd say that 99% [of adverts] are of people that are heterosexual. It’s really, really rare to see two girls having an Indian takeaway or you know, just day to day things... it is always straight couples ...it would be really nice to see two girls just having a sandwich (Julie, 47, White British, Lesbian)

Body Size Diversity

Women in this study feel more concerned over the lack of diversity in relation to their body size and shape in adverts than men, with over half (51%) of the women surveyed feeling that their body shape is not represented in London adverts.  Slim people were seen as the most over-represented of all adverts (43%) and over half (52%) felt that plus size people are not represented enough and 44% said they didn’t feel their body type was represented.

Many advertisements are aimed at beauty products, clothes, gyms and health products with messages that pressurise women and girls around their bodies. This constant pressure was spoken about at length by most participants aged 14-65. The survey asked respondents to rate a range of advertisements to see if they found them diverse, sexist, empowering, sexualised, inspiring, unrealistic/fake, healthy, unhealthy or empowering. 1 in 3 respondents and 40% of women reported comparing themselves to images of people in the adverts.

Figure 3 – Sample Advertisement from TFL, 2017

The above advertisement was the least popular of all eight surveyed, with only 28% of respondents liking it. Women this advertisement unrealistic (29%); unhealthy (27%); problematic (20%); sexualised (13%). In contrast, slightly more men found this image healthy (24%). This demonstrates how images of extremely thin women are understood as unhealthy and unrealistic by many women, whereas more men are likely to think this size is normal and healthy. Indeed, women are significantly more likely to say they see too many slim people in London adverts (50%) vs only 36% of men.

When looking at this advert, Saffron, a 21-year-old dance student, noted her anger at this type of imagery in the context of her experience in the dance industry and felt these types of advertisements were dangerous for young women.

It’s saying that everyone should be small, like that’s the ideal body...And I don’t think that’s right, I don’t think that’s positive, and that’s what causes people to be so self-obsessed and negative and lose their self-esteem” [my friends] are like taking pills instead of food, so they like swap it for like a meal.  And then they weigh themselves and they get operations and stuff, like, and it’s, really horrible (Saffron, 21, Iranian-White British)

Sexualisation

Sexualisation of women’ was the top answer given as to why respondents found advertisements unhealthy, inaccurate and unacceptable. The most unacceptable adverts in London are women in revealing clothing (36%), followed by men in revealing clothes (34%), which is higher than respondents’ dislike of fast food advertisements (28%). Participants felt women were misrepresented as a result of being sexualised and 50% of survey respondents think that the way women are represented hasn’t improved

• 68% of Londoners said that women are often shown in revealing clothes when it’s not relevant.
• Almost half of participants (45%) could remember seeing adverts of women in swimwear in London vs less than one in three (28%) remembering men in swimwear.

Women are significantly more likely to feel we see too many slim people in advertising (50% vs 36% men) and over half (51 %) of women surveyed stated that their body shape is not represented in advertisements compared to only 37% of men.

Overall participants felt women suffered significantly more misrepresentation than men through being sexualised:

It’s all the same type of women. It’s very sexualised imagery …They are just offensive… maybe the straplines are not as sexist as [previous ads] but I think the prevalence of the same type of model and the poses and clothing…that's been lost under the radar because it doesn’t trigger a protest…we are so used to it. (Sally, 33, White British)

Photoshopping

Altering photos was seen as unacceptable and happened too frequently. Photoshopping images in general is seen as not acceptable by 42%. This finding was significantly higher for women, 45+, who worried about body image. Over 2 in 3 (69%) think companies should need to state when they used photoshopped images. Almost all respondents (96%) feel that some adverts shown in the survey have been photoshopped and over 1 in 3 feel (36%) that all have been. This finding was significantly higher for 18-34s.

Many school girls complained about being bombarded by ‘fake’ images, and Nimisha explains how photoshopping creates harmful, unrealistic ideals for girls:

In the ads everyone is photoshopped so everyone has really smooth skin…I think skin retouching is harmful to girls because they are going to think they’re ugly and abnormal (Jasmine, Black British, 14)

Racialised Sexualisation

Sexualised imagery of black women was not seen as evidence of positive representation of diversity, but as something contributing to racist stereotypes about black women. This included sexualising larger black women, which was viewed as a new form of racializing stereotyping of black female bodies. This made some black women interviewed feel uncomfortable.

Figure 4 and 5 – Sample Advertisements running on TFL and social media, April 2018.

For example, Naomi found that figure 4 was ‘stereotyping:

Right, so I mean one, you are stereotyping how all black people speak and look. Also, you’ve got a black chick and she is oversized in the areas which used to be, you know, if you go back to colonization what the white men, European people were fascinated by about the Africans, the large bust, the large buttocks, large butts.  You know? (Naomi, 36, Black British).

Targeted Social Media Advertising

Survey respondents felt that online adverts were the most disliked of all ad mediums, with 35% saying they found online advertisements ‘problematic’. Our qualitative interviews found across the age range of teens to older women, many reported high annoyance at targeted advertising, which they experience as soon as they turn on their social media applications. They felt that it was scary, worrisome and a problem that companies were collecting their information and then spamming them with ads.

Participants were also concerned to find strategies to turn the ads off, particularly parents worried about children’s exposure online. For instance, Sierra tries to mitigate ads on her seven-year-old daughter’s tablet:

There is no way to ignore it apart from… when they come up on my daughter’s tablet I tend to turn it down, turn it over, and we count for five seconds and we turn it over and look again (Sierra, 41, Black British)

Imran, was similarly critical of social media advertisements process and showed us products like whitening creams and waxing products and services that came up repeatedly in her news feed:

…every female or every girl or woman cannot afford to buy the products, or pay for the beauty parlours.  And it can be really pressure for them to wear skirts, or short dresses, so they don’t want to look ugly.  Because one of my clients, when the sun came out and she was just saying oh she has to remove all her body hair because otherwise she would not be able to wear summer clothes” (Imran, 39, Asian)

Figure 6 – Targeted advertising on Imran’s phone

Targetted advertising exposed vulnerabilities in ways that could be dangerous. This was an issue that came up with young people in schools strongly. Girls were also asked to bring examples of advertising that they liked or disliked to a focus group and workshop session. We provided prompt images as well as the freely distributed papers on the TFL and sheets of large white paper; glue, sharpies; and sticky arrows to create collective collages of what they liked and what they would like to ‘talk back’ or as we came to think of it ‘craft back’ against problematic advertising content. Targetted advertising emerged strongly as a theme with the teen participants exploiting vulnerabilities in ways that could be highly problematic around weight loss products.

For example, our conversation with school girls found that Khloe Kardashian Gummy Bear Hair Vitamins 80USD were targeted at several participants. One older teens, Sondra (Black British, aged 16) confessed’ that she had asked her mom to buy her the blue hair vitamins which are shaped like a gummy bear, as did Monique (Black British, aged 15). While, Vickie (White British, aged 14) said that after seeing the ads repeatedly she felt ‘worn down’.

Figure 7 - Khloe Kardashian promoting Gummy Bear Hair Vitamins 80USD on social media

Advertising Campaigns Found to be Detrimental to Body Image

Participants were highly critical of products that used women’s bodies to
sell an unrelated product or that used sexualised slogans and taglines. Two in three Londoners (68%) feel that women are often shown in revealing clothes when it’s not relevant in London adverts.

The sexualisation of women and indeed men was also the top answer given as
to why respondents found advertisements inaccurate and unacceptable, with the most unacceptable adverts being women in revealing clothing (36%), followed by men in revealing clothes (34%). For example, almost half of participants (45%) can remember seeing adverts of women in swimwear in London vs less than one in three (28%) for men in swimwear.

We followed a case in point of sexualisation of women’s bodies through an advertising campaign that shows a clear difference in how men and women are represented (fig 8 and fig 9).

Figure 8 and 9 – Advertising campaign exemplifying how men and women are represented differently

The survey also showed that less than four in 10 (38%) of the respondents liked the female-focused advert above, whilst over half (55%) viewed it as sexualised. Over a fifth (22%) viewed it as sexist and 20% as unrealistic.

Recommendations and Responses

Advertisements should showcase diverse, representations of race, culture, age, ability and religion:

•    Empowering adverts are also the most diverse, especially those which show someone of an ethnically diverse background or individuals with a wider range of body shape in both men and women.

•    Images should be less sexual and degrading of women’s sexuality.

•    Women want adverts to reflect greater age diversity especially for clothing brands and not just focus on anti-ageing products.

Advertisements should showcase diverse body types and restrictions should be placed on photoshopping:

•    Study participants wanted to see more realistic and diverse people, such as in age and colour.

•    There are examples of adverts which the study found represented positive gender and diversity and showed several different body types, including shape and disability.

Advertisements should promote gender and sexual diversity:

•    Adverts that promoted gender and sexual diversity were praised by study participants, for example, non-gender clothing for men, women and non-binary people.

Which Campaigns Stand out in Promoting Positive Body Image? 

A competition, launched by the Mayor and TFL responded directly to these recommendations through a challenge to advertising agencies and brands, giving them the opportunity to compete to produce a campaign to create gender equitable and inclusive advertising, that would be profiled through free placement across the transport network. The campaigns had to respond to key recommendations from The Women We See Report. The winning advertisements created media awareness beyond public advertising in London and were notable for tackling real-life issues for women in a positive way and reflected the diversity of London with gender equitable and positive images and messaging. 

The campaign that won the 2018-9 competition was Holland and Barrett’s ‘Me.No.Pause’ advert which responded directly to the feeling of invisibility and lack of representation of older women in our research. The campaign focused on diverse women’s experiences of menopause and aimed to break the “taboo” around this life stage for women. The Me.No.Pause campaign, created by creative at Pablo, responded directly to the UCL research findings that women in their 50s felt the least represented in advertising and subsequently alienated and invisible. Holland and Barrett’s creative agency, Pablo, note they took up “the mission of addressing the imbalance that had been highlighted by the research by tackling an issue of real significance for this group.

Figure 10 - Holland and Barrett’s ‘Me.No.Pause’ Campaign, 2019.

The campaign was also accompanied by nation-wide in-store training for 6000 Holland and Barrett employees on how to assist customers who seek advice on the menopause. Quantitative indicators highlight the success of the campaign strategy. Commissioned research by YouGov showed by “February 11th 2019, just 2 weeks after its launch, 11% of the female population - 2.9m women – had talked to friends, family or colleagues about Holland & Barrett’s campaign. These campaigns provided a unique opportunity for more diverse women across the UK to feel better represented and feel more positive about ageing and body image. By March 2020 the campaign had achieved over 495 million impressions.

The runner up winner was Mothercare’s ‘Body Proud Mums’ campaign, created by Mcgarrybowen, which similarly responded to one of the concern in our findings for advertisers to limit use of photoshop and to create more realistic adverts. According to Mcgarrybowen’s creative strategist, the campaign sought to “tackle the reality gap where adverts present idealised, whitewashed and unrealistic depictions of parenthood.”  The campaign was also seen on 31 million TFL journeys in London but had a global impact with 1 billion earned impressions on social media (March 2020), nationwide and international publicity, widespread praise over social media and won multiple further awards for its use of 10 unretouched portraits of real mums with post-birth bodies holding their babies.

Figure 11 - Mothercare’s ‘Body Proud Mums’ campaign

The Mothercare Proud Body Mums campaign inspired mothers across the country to post images of their own postpartum bodies over Instagram under the hashtag #bodyproudmums, with many emotional testimonials to the campaign’s powerful positive effect. Mcgarrybowen said: “the success of Body Proud Mums helped us see the potential of creative agencies doing work like this and has helped our clients see they can have a meaningful impact through advertising”.

Body Positivity Lesson Plans for the Education Sector

These innovative, participatory, collaging methodologies developed in this research this to “craft back” against harmful advertising which promotes unhealthy body image enabled marginalised girls and women to create authentic and empowering representations of themselves (pictured throughout this submission of evidence). They have subsequently informed impactful educational resources. The Relationships and Sexuality Education Charity Sexplain have adopted the collaging methods to create ‘body positivity RSE lesson plans for schools which use the unique arts-based activism methods (“craftivism”) of collaging. So far these lessons have been delivered to 1000s of school children. Sexplain’s evaluation reports show important qualitative and quantitative evidence of how feminist sex education is shaping and transforming young people’s lives. For instance, 75% of participants agree they have a better understanding of sexual consent after Sexplain lessons and 67% agree they will be more respectful to other people because of the program. This impact is ongoing and quickly growing.

Figure 12 – School Craft-back Art Project

Research team:
 

Principal Investigator: Professor Jessica Ringrose, University College London Institute of Education

Co-Investigator Dr. Kaitlyn Regehr, University of Kent

Research assistants Shiva Zarabadi (UCL, IOE); Emilie Lawrence (UCL, IOE)

About the Investigators

Jessica Ringrose is Professor of Sociology of Gender and Education at the UCL Institute of Education and co-chair of the International Gender and Education Association. Her research explores youth digital gender and sexual cultures and activisms.  Her impact portfolio on gender equity public engagement work involves consultancies and advising for The Department for Education UK, The UK Government Equalities Office, The Mayor of London; The British Council, The Office of Children's Commissioner (England), The UK National Crime Agency; Stonewall; Womankind Worldwide and more. Her expertise and/or research findings regularly feature in major media outlets including the BBC and New York Times.  She has authored over 90 journal articles and book chapters, edited 5 special issues of journals, and is the author of 6 books, including most recently: Digital Feminist Activism: Girls and Women Fight back against Rape Culture (Oxford University Press, 2019).

Kaitlyn Regehr is a scholar of media and digital culture, whose research explores gender politics and relationship cultures in the age of Web 2.0. She is committed to making academic ideas accessible through broadcasting and interactive new technology and has created documentary content for the BBC and the Guardian. Her current projects include a commissioned documentary for BBC3 on online misogyny and “INCEL” (Involuntary Celibates); and an upcoming project with Jessica Ringrose that examines contemporary sex and relationship education and considers the complex web of image exchange, consent and safe digital practices for youth in the techno-facilitated era. Her book with photographer, Matilda Temperley, The League of Exotic Dancers: Legends from American Burlesque (Oxford University Press, 2017) is on one of America’s first sex workers’ unions.

We are submitting this evidence on behalf of the UCL Institute of Education and the University of Kent.

June 2020

References

Ringrose, Jessica, and Kaitlyn Regehr. 2018. “The Women We See: Experiences

of Gender and Diversity in London’s Public Spaces.” Report, Mayor of London,

London. https://www.london.gov.uk/sites/default/files/2018_women_we_see.pdf

Ringrose, J., Regehr, K and Zarabadi, S. (2019) Crafting Back: Challenging Bodies in Public Advertising, paper presented at Diversity and Disruption: An Intersectional Valentine, University of Kent, February 14, 2019  https://www.theculturecapitalexchange.co.uk/2019/01/31/crafting-back-challenging-bodies-in-public-advertising/

Ringrose, J. and Regehr, K. (2020) Feminist Counter Publics and Public Feminisms: Advancing a Critique of Racialized Sexualisation in London’s Public Advertising, Signs a journal of women and culture in society. 46(1): 1-29 DOI: 10.1086/709362

Ringrose, J. and Regehr, K. (2020) Difficult Research Effects/Affects: An intersectional look at racialised sexualisation in public advertising in Róisín Ryan-Flood, Isabel Crowhurst and Laurie Hawkins (eds). Difficult Conversations: A Feminist Dialogue, London: Routledge.

Ringrose, J. Tolman, D. and Ragonese, M. (2018) Hot right now: Diverse girls’ navigating technologies of racialised sexy femininity, Feminism and Psychology 29 (1): 76-95

Appendix: Methodology

Qualitative sampling took place through recruitment firm to reflect diversity in terms of postcodes, but also cultural background, sexual orientation, age, and income from across 10 inner London and 2 Outer London Boroughs. 

Qualitative adult women sample (16)

Schools sample 

1 inner London Postcode (SE8) School and 1 outer London postcode (KT3):

• SE8 School (Co-Educational Comprehensive) 12 Girls aged 14-16
• KT3 (Girls School and Sixth Form College) 8 Girls aged 14-16

Survey Sample Makeup

To ensure a representative sample of London's population we set up quotas on the following criteria:

• gender
• age
• regions
• income brackets
• housing tenure

• ethnicity

To further ensure the data is reflective of London's makeup, we applied a weighting scheme on gender, age, income and regions to match the known population.