Campaign group and social media users decry ‘hottest fans’ gallery as a sexist throwback to 1970s

Picture agency Getty has come under fire from campaigners and social media users after publishing, then deleting, a gallery of what it deemed the “sexiest” fans at the World Cup.

The gallery, with the sub-heading “Talk about a knock-out round …”, exclusively featured pictures of women, and was tweeted out with the description “The hottest fans at the #WorldCup” in a social media post that was subsequently removed.

“The 1970s called and they want their misogyny back,” said one user in response to the now deleted tweet.

A spokesperson for This Fan Girl – a campaign group working to transform the stereotypical image of female football supporters – said: “This list from Getty that has come out today is so disappointing. They need to do better; because of their size and influence, they have a huge responsibility to not perpetuate the toxic male primacy that exists in football.”

Not everybody on social media disapproved of the gallery’s theme, with some posters suggesting that “jealousy” from “triggered feminists” was behind the complaints.

The gallery has now been removed from Getty’s site, replaced with the message: “Earlier, we published a piece, ‘World Cup 2018: The Sexiest Fans’, that did not meet our editorial standards. We regret the error and have removed the piece. There are many interesting stories to tell about the World Cup and we acknowledge this was not one of them.”

Confirming that Getty had not sought individual permission from the women pictured to feature them in the gallery in this way, a company spokesperson said there would now be an internal investigation. They added “Getty Images holds a deep belief in the power of visuals to incite change and shift attitudes and we have done, and will continue to do, much work to promote and create a more evolved and positive depiction of women.”

Before the World Cup started, This Fan Girl was involved in a campaign to try to change image search results associated with female football fans. They say that while the World Cup has shown some progress in the portrayal of women at football matches, there is still much work to be done.

“Football has come on leaps and bounds – the addition of Eni Aluko and Alex Scott to the World Cup commentary team is great, but then there’s Jason Cundy’s comments [on female match commentators] and Julieth Gonzalez Theran getting groped on camera whilst she was doing a live broadcast.

“We started off buzzing about the progress, but every day there is more and more stuff that shows just how much our campaign to shift the focus to be more representative is needed.”