This Girl Can highlights the realities of the fitness grind in new anniversary ad

Five years after the campaign first launched, This Girl Can returns with a new ad showing a fuller picture of exercise and sport – cramps, childcare, eye rolls and all

This Girl Can has returned with a new spot, Me Again, which focuses on the “unfiltered reality of women being active”. From periods and cramps to juggling childcare – not forgetting your average lack of motivation – the ad spotlights the difficulties faced by many women trying to get active. In keeping with previous ads, Me Again features women with a wide range of body types, but marks a concerted effort to increase representation of disabled people and LBGTQ+ communities engaging with sport.

The ad comes five years after Sport England first launched This Girl Can, and in that time the initiative has quietly evolved. Rather than the well-meaning but perhaps slightly OTT slogans we saw in its early days (‘I jiggle therefore I am’ or ‘I kick balls, deal with it’), the new ad instead plays on the lyrics of Little Simz’s Offence, which are a good fit for the ad’s message.

The influence of This Girl Can can be felt throughout the wider ad industry too, both within sport and beyond. In a recent ad, Adidas opted for a more inclusive approach to sport by celebrating unusual forms of exercise, albeit with a bit more gloss. And of course, showing the realities of being a woman brings to mind Libresse’s ongoing effort to tackle period taboos – which comes full circle in the new This Girl Can ad, as a woman reveals a tampon string poking out as she hoists up her leggings, set to the sound of Simz announcing: “I don’t care who I offend”.

Credits:
Agency: FCB Inferno
Director: Ali Kurr
Production company: Partizan