Nike & Privilege (Original)

Nike – Just Do It (Original Ad)

As Viola Davis put in her Emmy acceptance speech (1), women of color need opportunities to actually exist before they can be expected to work hard to obtain them, but these opportunities are often guarded by the elite. In contrast, the pervasive ad campaign “Just Do It” has become a symbol to the world that all people need to get through their personal or societal barriers is to “pull themselves up by their bootstraps”, a common cultural understanding in the West often used to blame the disenfranchised for their own position in life.

As for who it effects, I believe the disingenuous message being propagated by the campaign speaks to multiple intersections of identity. By leaving their message vague Nike encourages the consumer to interpret its message in whichever way suits them at the time. For example a woman reading this ad is being suggested to interpret the fact that she is not getting ahead in her career as a result of her own lack of effort rather than patriarchal realities such as the fact that the person doing the hiring may be a male who believes women don’t have what it takes to “do it”.

Moreover with Nike being a Global company the message of this campaign gets delivered to people all over the Global South suggesting to them that it is not border imperialism or colonialism that causes many of their circumstances to remain bleak but in fact it is that they haven’t considered “just doing it” and/or buying all of Nike’s second hand clothing that gets dumped into their country as it destroys their local economy. This is of course after their labour was exploited to create the clothing in the first place.

Then of course with Nike being first and foremost an athletic wear company the natural suggestion to many would be that the main reason why they are not seeing results in their physical work out routine is simply their lack of mental grit and not genetics or other circumstances beyond the individual’s control thus contributing to fat phobia and ableism in our world.

1. Viola Davis Gives Powerful Speech About Diversity and Opportunity | Emmys 2015. (2015). Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSpQfvd_zkE

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