Nike’s “My body” Campaign

1423 Words3 Pages

Real Beautiful Woman

“If you have a body, you are an athlete,” said Bill Bowerman. (Nike.com) In the world of advertising, the mass media provides images of the right men and attractive women and attempts hereby to impose the ideal image in the minds of society. By showing Nike’s strategy involving transforming traditional patriarchal images and stories into images of female authority that are socially acceptable to its intended consumers. These pictures of Nike’s “My body” campaign in 1995 looks into what a real women is through intertextual and picture analysis to get a look into the woman's deep emotions about body image and make that beautiful, confident, and high esteemed Nike woman a desirable woman to be. I will be focusing on the images below from the Nike campaign along with the assumption that high fashion images of women are recognized as beautiful and therefore an ideal for other women to show that Nike is not portraying a "real" woman but rather an alternative equally unattainable womanly figure.

Nike, originally known as "Blue Ribbon Sports", was founded by University of Oregon track athlete Philip Knight and his coach Bill Bowerman in January 1964. In1971, Nike became the twentieth century footwear that lifted the world’s greatest athletes to new levels of mastery and achievement. Nike’s mission statement is to bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete of the world. The famous SWOOSH logo is a graphic design created by Caroline Davidson in 1971. It represents the embodiment of the spirit of the winged goddess, who inspired the most courageous and chivalrous warriors at the dawn of the Greek civilization. Caroline Davidson was a student at Portland State University in advertising. She met Phil Knight while...

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Work Cited

Arsenault, Darin J. , and Tamer Fawzy. "Just buy it: Nike advertising aimed at Glamour readers: A critical feminist analysis." Tamara: Journal of Critical Postmodern Organization Science 1 Jan. 2001: 63-76. Print.

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Ioan, Ileana. "WOMEN IN MODERN PRINT ADS - AN OVERVIEW." Revista Academiei Fortelor Terestre 14.2 (2009): 43-50. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 3 Aug. 2011.

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Singley, C.J. "From Women’s Movement to Momentum: Where Are We Going, Where Have We Been, and Do We Need Nikes to Get There?." Journal of American & Comparative Cultures

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