Protein World's "Beach Body Ready" Ad

Overview

Protein World’s “Beach Body Ready” Ad refers to a London Underground weight loss product advertisement featuring a bikini-clad women with the message “Are you beach body ready?”, which was accused of “body shaming” and promoting “unrealistic body images” by activists in April 2015.

Background

On April 12th, 2015, Twitter user Hannah Atkinson posted a photograph of a Protein World advertisement taken in a London Underground station in London, England, adding that the ad “sums up everything that I despise about how we treat and value women’s bodies” (shown below). In the first three weeks, the tweet garnered more than 460 retweets and 400 favorites. On April 15th, Atkinson’s tweet was highlighted in a listicle on BuzzFeed^[5] titled “Can You Guess What These Sexist Adverts Are Trying To Sell?”

Notable Developments

Change.org Petition

On April 17th, 2015, United Kingdom resident Charlotte Baring created a petition on Change.org^[4] titled “Remove ‘Are You Beach Body Ready’ Advertisements” (shown below). In the first two weeks, the petition gathered upwards of 53,500 signatures of its 75,000 goal.

Protests

On April 22nd, 2015, feminist activists Tara Castello and Fiona Longmuir staged a protest in front of a Protein World ad in a London Underground train station while wearing bikinis. That day, Longmuir published a blog post^[12] about the protest and highlighted a photograph of herself and Castello standing in front of the ad (shown below, left). On April 25th, Castello created a Facebook^[3] event page for a protest titled “Taking Back the Beach,” encouraging users to join a demonstration against the Protein World ad at Hyde Park in London, England on May 2nd (shown below, right).

Ad Vandalism

On April 22nd, 2015, the @VagendaMagazine^[13] Twitter feed posted a photograph of a Protein World ad defaced with the message “Your body is not a commodity” (shown below, left). In the coming days, several other Twitter users tweeted more photographs of vandalized ads to the @VagendaMagazine.

Protein World’s Response

On April 23rd, the @ProteinWorld Twitter feed responded to Twitter user @JulietteBurton, asking her “why make your insecurities our problem ;)” (shown below, left). On April 25th, @ProteinWorld responded to Twitter users @laurenlaverne and @LarenKancashire, claiming that sales for the company had tripled since the controversy began (shown below, right). That day, Redditor alanitoo submitted screenshots of @ProteinWorld’s tweets to the /r/fatlogic^[14] subreddit, where it accumulated more than 2,400 votes (94% upvoted) and 240 comments in the next 72 hours.

On April 27th, Redditor cloudno7 submitted a screenshot of an email from Protein World’s Head of Global Marketing Richard Staveley, claiming that the company received over £1,000,000 in revenue over the last four days (shown below).^[1]

On 4chan

On April 25th, a thread with the message “Where were you when Protein World literally raped this poor woman?” was created on the /pol/ (politics) board on 4chan.^[4] In the coming days, several other threads were created on /pol and /fit/ (fitness).^{[7][8][9][10][11]}

#EveryBodysReady

Critics of the advertisement launched the hashtag #EveryBodysReady^[2] on Twitter to promote body acceptance. The hashtag was subsequently hijacked by those who defended Protein World’s ad.

News Media Coverage

In the comings days, several news sites published articles about the controversy, including The Independent,^[15] Time,^[16] Mashable,^[17] The Guardian,^[18] Today,^[19] Metro,^[20] Breitbart,^[21] The Drum^[22] and The Spectator.^[23]

Search Interest

External References