Adidas, a German-based sports apparel company, just released an ad for sports bras that was shocking, to say the least. It featured female breasts totally exposed. The ad states: “We believe women’s breasts in all shapes and sizes deserve support and comfort. Which is why our new sports bra range contains 43 styles, so everyone can find the right fit for them.”

Who thought this was a good idea?

This is wrong on so many levels, but first, from an advertising standpoint, it completely disregards the prospective buyer. A woman is not going to look at this ad and say, “Wow! I want those sports bras.” They are much more likely to be repulsed and offended. I certainly was — and I’m their target buyer. Also, Adidas doesn’t show the actual product. Women want to see what the product looks like when worn and this ad does not deliver.

This ad campaign is potentially in plain view of children, who do not need to be bombarded with these pornographic images. As political pundit Matt Walsh describes it, the photo spread is serial killer-like in starkness. Our culture is already too much in a hurry to take away the innocence of our children through sex education in the public schools as well as through the bold perverts coming out of the woodwork trying to normalize pedophilia. This may explain Adidas’s shamelessness, but it certainly doesn’t justify it. The images in the ad are also those that their young minds are not ready or able to properly process.

The biggest rationalization that Adidas offers is that this is promoting “body positivity” (because the images are of all body types, large, small, old, and young). This is a major fallacy on its part. Adidas is, in point of fact, doing the exact opposite. It claims to be an ad for sports bras, but as I mentioned before, those products are not displayed in the ad at all. The company is literally selling women’s bodies as the object for sale. It is precisely the sort of objectification that harms women the most.

Vulgar displays of immodesty are a sign of culture devolving, not progressing. Modesty is a Judeo-Christian-rooted idea that dates back to the beginning of time, and yet women repeat the cycle of leaning toward the immodest again and again. Our current style of dress can be very immodest and frankly it is a misunderstanding of the power and importance that modesty provides.

In John McArthur’s book Twelve Extraordinary Women, he explains that as Christianity spread in the Middle East to Greece and Rome, modesty set Christian women apart. He summarizes Tertullian, an early church father who wrote about this change in women: “He said pagan women who wore elaborate hair ornaments, immodest clothing, and body decorations had actually been forced by society and fashion to abandon the superior splendor of true femininity. He noted, by way of contrast, that as the church had grown and the gospel had borne fruit, one of the visible results was the rise of a trend toward modesty in women’s dress and a corresponding elevation in the status of women.” Modesty is a sign of a culture where women are respected and revered, and this ad is certainly not that.

One thing is certain: I will not be tempted to buy an Adidas product anytime soon.