Sweatin' until my Skechers come off.....

I need me a new pair of skechers.

It started in 2004. I was walking around the Oshawa Center with my family, and this lovely ad just happens to stumble my way. Being a 14-year-old boy, I did the logical thing at my age:

I stared.

I stared inconspicuously, of course. Now when you think of Sketchers, you think of good, wholesome family-oriented shoes that everyone can look at and be like “I can buy those at Winners in about 4 years”. Did you ever think that X-tina (Xtina?) would step in and take these shoe ads and kick it up a notch?

In John Berger’s Ways of seeing, a good portion of the book concentrated on old European paintings, which either illustrated women being “treated as a thing or an abstraction” or men of power and wealth at the time. Since the women in these paintings were nude, it was considered that they belonged to a man; I don’t think a woman of high class would own an oil painting of another woman… would they?

Today though, things have sort of changed; you think of naked pictures of women, you think of playboy, Megan Fox or just eroticism overall. It is no longer about ownership, it’s about who has the hottest body.

In my opinion (and I SWEAR that I’m not saying this because I’m a guy), I believe that this marketing campaign was a smart move on Sketchers part. Why you may ask?

SEX SELLS.

It seems extremely cliché, but it is one of the most truthful facts that humanity has to understand. Even though you are a mom trying to protect your daughter from the crude works of the world, she is still going to see it when she gets older.

Although the ad does focus more on Christina Aguilera, it still catches a lot more people’s attention; the wholesome family ads don’t always cut it anymore.

Thanks for reading guys, until next time!

Work cited

Berger, John. Ways of Seeing. Penguin, 1990. Print.