Heterosexism seen in advertising... and Nike does no wrong??











Heterosexism Ad #1

The fact that an advertising committee had to sit around a table and create this ad for Nike disgusts me. "That Ain't Right", implying that homosexuality "Ain't Right". How is this still happening, in 2012? This is telling young athletes, especially boys, that if they are to ever be in situation that resembles anything of a homosexual relationship that they should consider themselves losers and failures. The positioning of the two basketball players is extremely sexual as well, which confuses me because this would never be done to a heterosexual relationship ad. So not only is this Nike ad telling me that homosexuality "ain't right", it is also over sexualizing it and making people almost disgusted with it. This ad is actually doing the most damage to our society because it is teaching already mostly homophobic young athletes that they should never be even thought of as gay because they will look like a complete loser.

I would have done this ad differently if I were in charge of Nike's advertising. I understand the concept of not wanting to lose that Nike instills in it's buyers, but you can definitely do that with the implied homosexual oral sex positioning. I would have just simply had one of the basketball players completely schooling the other basketball, without the sexual positioning, and I definitely would have chosen a different phrase than "that aint' right". Nike knows better than to publish something like this, but they just seem to want to please their target buyers which sickens me.