viz.

The referencing of battered women in these photos is obvious, and unfortunate. But in defense of the advertising firm, I can see what they were trying to do here, which is show tough women, to show women wearing the wounds of sport (glorious in our culture), rather than the wounds of abuse (all too common in our culture).

Maybe one way the ads might have attempted to reference sport (which is what I assume they're doing since the goal is to sell sports bras) would be to have shown some sports equipment in the photos. They could have slung a pair of boxing gloves over the shoulder of the woman with the black eyes, put a hockey stick in one of their hands, or otherwise visual referenced the ways these women could have been hurt in competition, from being tough, athletic competitors. Maybe that wouldn't have been enough to off-set the connotations of violence on these women's faces, but it certainly seems to me that it could have mitigated that issue some.

I think this is ad campaign is an excellent example of good intentions poorly executed, and thus, a failed message nonetheless. But the company didn't buy the ads, so somewhere along the line things worked.