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The key to feeling empowered is cramming your arse into a pair of skin-tight leggings. That’s the message some are taking away from Sweaty Betty’s window display, which reads “bum-sculpting leggings for empowerment”.  

This week, a photo of one shop window was tweeted by journalist Hattie Brewis, who asked: “Could someone please explain to me how having a ‘sculpted’ arse is empowering?”.

The choice of words has also been discussed on a Mumsnet thread, where it was branded “silly”. And Eliza Clark, a 26-year-old author based in London, was equally unimpressed when she walked past the display last month. 

“It caught my eye while I was out for a walk and I actually laughed out loud at it,” Clark tells HuffPost UK. “After all the discussion of how off-putting it is to see brands co-opting progressive language to sell stuff, it was a bit shocking to see this so brazenly out in the wild in 2020.”

Clark continues: “Seeing a window display insisting I’ll find empowerment via vacuum packing my backside into a pair of £80 running leggings in the middle of a massive economic crash added a particularly grim layer to it!” 

You may be tempted to roll your eyes at such advertising and move on. But Natasha Devon, a body image and mental health campaigner, perviously told HuffPost UK that seeing subtle messages while walking down the high street can impact how we feel about our bodies. 

She explained that 90% of our total capacity for thought is unconscious – and the brain learns through repetition of words, images, or experiences.

“Let’s say you’re walking down a street and you pass a bus stop with a diet advert on it and then a row of magazines and you see a billboard with a very conventionally attractive woman on it,” she explained, speaking on HuffPost UK’s weekly podcast Am I Making You Uncomfortable?.

“Our unconscious brain is drinking in from the idea that you’re not good enough and that you need to be changed.” The adverts we see in our day-to-day lives, it seems, can be part of a much bigger problem.  

HuffPost UK has contacted Sweaty Betty in relation to the comments made about the display and will update this article if we receive a response.