Today sports commercials are taking strides to confront and address racism by adopting a more inclusive approach to selecting athletes for their promotions. While this shift is seen as progressive towards equality in sports advertising, it also can cause unintentional harm due to the differing portrayals of male and female black athletes.
The primary message in the Gatorade commercial “The Moment Possibilities Are Born”, is that sports inspire new possibilities. Gatorade's inclusion of black male and female athletes is inspiring as black athletes make up most of the commercial and are all portrayed in powerful lights. Gatorade does not outwardly address racism or inequality but rather puts black and white athletes on the same level in their
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The commercial depicts a black and white athlete going face to face doing pushups and racially diverse athletes straining together in the weight room. By casting both black and white athletes, Under Armour aims to address racism. Evidence from the study “Its Gotta Be the Shoes: Youth, race, and sneaker commercials” supports the positive impact of this commercial on the black male community. Black respondent groups in the study stated that the portrayal of “both playing style and cultural identification” were important in their identification with black athletes (Wilson and Sparks 416). Thus, it is safe to say that black males benefitted from this representation, however, the same cannot be said for the black female community. Research in “The Serena Show: Mapping Tensions Between Masculinized and Feminized Media Portrayals of Serena Williams and the Black Female Sporting Body” highlights the media's failure to represent black female athletes in positive and inspirational ways. Despite the Under Armour commercial featuring both male and female athletes, there is not a single black woman represented. This exclusion perpetuates harmful stereotypes that hinder black female athletes like Serena Williams. Although the commercial does not outwardly represent black female athletes negatively, the fact that it does not include them at all only assists in disregarding the achievements of these