Stephanie Gilmore Roxy Ad Creates Controversy [Video]

Stephanie Gilmore is a professional surfer who happens to also be a pretty beautiful woman. Which of those things do you think Roxy focused on to create its commercial for the Women’s World Championship Tour of Surfing..

Several people have criticized Roxy this week for creating a commercial that focuses more on Gilmore’s sex appeal than her ability to surf.

Disgusted Roxy fans took to the company’s Facebook page to complain about the ad.

One person writes: “Utterly disgusted that a brand which promotes natural beauty with vast female base clients focus so much on sexualizing a female athlete’s body when promoting a world surfing event.”

The Stephanie Gilmore Roxy commercial was supposed to promote the Women’s World Championship Tour of Surfing. It was supposed to showcase strong women athletes and promote a female sport and its amazing athletes.

Several people criticized Roxy for missing that opportunity.

Others said that the commercial’s tagline, “Women are complex and multi-dimensional,” was hypocritical since the Roxy ad, which never shows Gilmore’s face, only focused one one aspect of the surfer.

One user writes: “Women are complex and multi-dimensional. To ignore this fact is to ignore who we truly are.” You only showed one dimension of women (how they look) so therefore you have ignored who we truly are. There should be surfing in the ad, cause in case you forgot, you’re running a SURFING contest soon! Lost respect for roxy!”

Here’s the new Roxy commercial featuring Stephanie Gilmore. What do you think about the ad?

Roxy responded to the criticism today saying that you “don’t have to be sexy to be an athlete” but that doesn’t mean that an athlete can’t be sexy.

Roxy writes: “Obviously, there’s been much conversation around the video we recently released. We believe all athletes are naturally beautiful, in and out of the water. You certainly don’t have to be sexy to be an athlete, we also believe it’s not wrong to be an athlete and to be sexy, if you choose to be. We don’t judge one to be better than the other. We don’t believe in excluding one for the other.”

The company also released a new ad. Stephanie Gilmore could still be considered a sex object in the new ad but at least they show her face. Oh, Gilmore actually surfs in the new video too.