Rugby | Oona Tolppanen speaks directly about the underwear scandal

Britain’s an underwear ad starring national team athletes has sparked discussion on social media. The women of the national rugby team pose for an underwear company Bluebella in the ad. Women are wearing buttons and sports socks on the sports field, otherwise they are wearing sexy underwear.

A British underwear company Strong is beautiful -campaign was certainly hoped to arouse reactions, and it has indeed received them. The purpose of the campaign has been to present strong women, but it has received widespread criticism that presenting women as sex objects is not very new or promotes equality.

Bluebella’s advertising campaign has been criticized in an angry tone by, among others, former Olympic athletes, a swimmer Sharron Davies and a marathon runner Mara Yamauchi. In their opinion, the campaign does not promote equality.

Read more: Female athletes posed in an underwear campaign – a complete hit on social media

Finland playing in the rugby team Oona Tolppanen has been following the debate, but is not outraged by the campaign. He believes that rugby players have been selected for the advertisement precisely because the sport is not very appearance-oriented.

Rugby is a tough contact sport. Unlike, for example, in many summer sports, rugby players’ sportswear is very covering. Now the athletes are photographed in quite revealing outfits.

“Rugby is a sport where every body shape, model and body structure is welcome. Different playing venues require different physical characteristics. The sport is certainly one of the least appearance-focused sports, which was certainly one of the reasons for the choice,” believes Tolppanen.

Tolppanen points out that athletic men have posed in boxer ads throughout the ages.

“I don’t see this as unequal, male athletes have also posed in underwear photos and boxer brands like Björn Borg or Christiano Ronaldo’s CR7 have emerged through them.”

“Kind of it’s great if different body models are highlighted in the masculine sport, and not always just a certain type of body. This could have perhaps included even more different sports, for example martial arts,” Tolppanen reflects.

Tolppanen has noted that today in general you see a wide variety of models in advertisements, in that sense the industry has moved forward.

“The pictures show women with different body structures, different ages and different ethnic backgrounds.”

A woman position in sports has been worse than that of men, so Tolppanen also understands irritated reactions.

“These comments show that one would not want female athletes to receive attention in the “wrong way”. And I agree with this. The women’s rugby team is really respected in England and I believe that the players have been allowed to decide for themselves whether to join the campaign. Sometimes it feels like it’s the women themselves who elevate women to a halo.”

Tolppanen thinks that maybe the halo would have been avoided if sportier underwear had been used in the campaign.

The campaign in connection, a study was also referred to, according to which girls are three times more likely to stop playing sports at the age of 13 than boys. In the study, the reasons were, for example, lack of self-confidence and distorted body image. According to Tolppanen, the donkey bridge from research to underwear advertising is lame.

“Encouraging children and young people to play sports with pictures of underwear is not necessarily the most reasonable starting point for the campaign. Rather, improving women’s body image among adults and accepting different body models.”

How does Tolppanen feel, could the women of the Finnish national rugby team be seen in a similar campaign?

“It is a personal matter of every athlete, which shootings they want to participate in. Surely someone from our team would like to join and someone wouldn’t. We have indeed advertised, for example, sports bras with GPS tracking included.”

Below is a publication about the Finnish team’s sports bra collaboration.