Ladies: are you beach body ready? It is the question we should all be asking ourselves, now that it is April and the tediously predictable cycle of bikini body-related cynicism has kicked into gear. It may not make much grammatical sense, but any woman who has noticed the massive billboards plastering our public transport system this week knows what the question really means.

Is your body, the incredibly complex, awe-inspiring physical vessel that carts around your brain, and equipment for breathing, excreting, digesting and so much more, and is perhaps even growing new life within it, currently at a level of slimness determined as attractive according to western notions of female beauty such that it can be exposed to fellow human beings on the beach without causing them unnecessary trauma?

My own slogan would probably be deemed overly long by the advertisers, who happen in this case to be Protein World, hawkers of supplements. They want you to look at the picture of a woman in a bikini and feel bad about yourself, then go online and indulge in their “weight loss collection” of powders and capsules. This may not be an appealing proposition for you; perhaps you have a fondness for cheese on toast, or the consumption of protein shakes by the men in your life and their subsequent odorous emissions have bred a seething dislike of Holland & Barrett. Perhaps, like me, it’s a bit of both.

It’s strange, coming back to a world of advertising when you’ve been away. I just visited Cuba, where there are no ads at all, unless you count the odd bit of graffiti proclaiming “Socialism or death”. On my return, descending into the dark, putrid bowels of London’s underground system was quite a shock. I hadn’t realised quite how much my field of vision is occupied without my consent by images and messages that want to sell me stuff (and, being a woman, it’s usually based on claims that it will make me look better). The sheer volume of it is alarming; one advert, for a makeup brand, showing a spread-eagled woman, was repeated six or seven times, just in case the initial message (lipstick, I think) hadn’t got through.

It is difficult to determine how many adverts humans are exposed to on a daily, or even yearly basis. One study estimated that by the age of 12, girls have seen 77,500 adverts, but the study is eight years old – it must be more now. It was also commissioned by Dove, for the purposes of making – you guessed it – an advert. Dove is verily the Schrödinger’s cat of advertisers, a brand so convinced of the merits of quantum superposition that it proclaims it doesn’t buy into all that body fascism that the other companies are doing, while simultaneously selling you stuff that will supposedly make your cellulite disappear. But the cat is dead. It drank the poison the minute the words “real women” were uttered for the thousandth time.

Now, I’m not saying I want “Socialism or death”. It’s hard to get cheese on toast in Cuba, not to mention freedom of speech, but a visual field that is occasionally unfettered by commercialised sexism is not too much to ask. Save for the odd forehead cock, the politically motivated defacement of advertising is not as fashionable as it once was.

Feminists may fondly recall the Fiat advert – slogan: “if it were a lady, it would get its bottom pinched” – that one clever woman vandalised with the words “if this lady was a car she’d run you down”. You rarely see such things these days, but the art of subvertising is alive and well on the internet. Someone has already mocked up their own version of Protein World’s ad. It says simply: “Are you fucking kidding me?”

Social media also presents a plethora of options, as those who trolled the Femfresh Facebook group may remember. So swamped was it by mocking refuseniks that it led to their ridiculous “Woo-hoo for my froo froo” campaign being pulled. Not that I’m encouraging you to do the same with Protein World (I am).

Ultimately, brands such as these will continue their sexist advertising tactics for as long as we let them. Let’s not let them. Consider this a call for resistance.

And remember: the only thing you need in order to be beach ready, to bask in the glorious sunshine and to swim in the wild saltiness of a seemingly endless sea, is that marvellous vessel of yours. It belongs to you and you only.