We have a new NIKE advertising campaign, centering around dance (my gym is one of the first to offer the NIKE rockstar workout, a hip hop based dance routine which is really fun, I adore it, and no I'm not on commission!!!)
Anyhoo, they have, for one of their adverts, a larger lady, who does a dance routine, and then says "so tell me I'm not an athlete"
It's a really great ad, and I think sends out a really powerful message, that you don't have to be slim to be an athlete.
The only thing that makes me steam is that I have never seen anything larger in our sports shop that a UK size 18 (a US 14)........ sigh, we still have a ways to go yet before we have any sort of size equality in the world of exercise.
Oh, that reminds me... a couple of weeks ago I was watching something on the Discovery Channel about the human body adapting itself physiologically to extreme weather conditions. They interviewed the woman who swam the Bering Strait in 1987, because her body has adapted by lowering its base temperature quite low, plus she has developed a full-body layer of fat for insulation because she spends nearly all of her time in very cold conditions for training.
She's a fantastic athlete in great condition but she's quite chubby looking due to the insulating layer, while being very muscular and healthy. Really amazing. But they had a shot of her at the gym working out like a fiend and the woman next to her on some machine (a treadmill, I think) was giving her such a nasty look, I assumed because the swimmer looks so heavy. But in reality the swimmer was in much better condition - an athlete - than the nasty woman! Sad...
Copy: My butt is big and round like the letter C and ten thousand lunges have made it rounder but not smaller. And that's just fine. It's a space heater for my side of the bed. It's my ambassador. To those who walk behind me, it's a border collie that herds skinny women away from the best deals at clothing sales. My butt is big and that's just fine. And those who might scorn it are invited to kiss it.
I love that!! And I love the fact that so many of us former couch potatoes are MOVING it and LOSING it and finding our physical strengths in the meantime!
I forgot to mention that I can do real pushups! Not the girly kind, and not very many but it was so far out of what I had ever thought possible for myself! I think I will kiss my biceps right now!
This came out in the early-mid 90s, and it's been my favorite Nike ad ever since:
"A WOMAN IS OFTEN MEASURED by the things she cannot control. She is measured by the way her body curves or doesn't curve, by where she is flat or straight or round. She is measured by 36-24-36 and inches and ages and numbers, by all the outside things that don't ever add up to who she is on the inside. And so if a woman is to be measured, let her be measured by the things she can control, by who she is and who she is trying to become. Because every woman know, measurements are only statistics and STATISTICS LIE."
Mousie, that's another goodie! Yep, we really do need these in T-shirts!
Here are some other Nike ones for body parts:
Copy: My shoulders aren't dainty or proportional to my hips. Some say they are like a man's. I say, leave men out of it. They are mine. I made them in a swimming pool then I went to yoga and made my arms.
Copy: My knees are tomboys. They get bruised and cut every time I play soccer. I'm proud of them and wear my dresses short. My mother worries I will never marry with knees like these. But I know there's someone out there who will say to me: I love you and I love your knees. I want the four of us to grow old together.
"A WOMAN IS OFTEN MEASURED by the things she cannot control. She is measured by the way her body curves or doesn't curve, by where she is flat or straight or round. She is measured by 36-24-36 and inches and ages and numbers, by all the outside things that don't ever add up to who she is on the inside. And so if a woman is to be measured, let her be measured by the things she can control, by who she is and who she is trying to become. Because every woman know, measurements are only statistics and STATISTICS LIE."[/QUOTE]
When I was thinkin' I wanted to be an image consultant ... we learned that business of body shape A's, H's, V's and 8's. We were told that measurements only account for something if you're cut in slices.
So tell me I'm not an athlete!
Oh!
