Nike Ad

Sorry, guys, but this one really hits home and makes me tear up every time I see it. To me, Nike advertising hit a home run with this one.

http://jezebel.com/5921039/when-i-was-growing-up-girls-just-didnt-run-in-public

Goddamn that's good!

Saw that posted on FB. Very well done.

thats so awesome love it!

I worry about nowaday's boys, as myy girl is faster than most of boys in her class.

That's a great video!!

Very cool video. And I was about to get negative about Nike choosing Taurasi as I remember she was caught doping a couple of years back, but then I did my homework and it reads like it was a non-issue and the Turks absolved her of any wrong-doing.

It IS a great video. But, it's historically a little flawed.

While we have come to know it best for its impact on sports, Title IX actually had more to do with the civil rights movement than women's rights. The intent was to make it illegal to discriminate - against any group - in terms of access to higher education. Title IX didn't contain any specific reference to interscholastic/intercollegiate sports until later in the 70's.

My older sister was a four sport star in HS before Title IX - basketball, softball, field hockey and track. She was as determined and aggressive and competitive - and accepted - as anyone in her era, male of female. No one was telling her she shouldn't compete.

Focusing for just a moment on Joan Benoit Samuelson, Joan was 10 when Kathrine Switzer ran Boston - and while she was the first to wear a bib, she certainly wasn't the first to run it.

By the time Joan was 15, the pressure was strong enough that women were officially allowed to enter, two months before Title IX was passed.

So when she says "when I was growing up girls just didn't run in public," well, that may have been true in many many parts of the country, but it wasn't a universal truth. 100 miles from Boston? Geez, I dunno. Would love to hear Michele 1L's comments on what it was like in New England then. Joan probably heard that from some people sitting on their porches in Maine. And Title IX didn't drive that change, Frank Shorter did (also 40 years ago).

Have women struggled for equality in this country, in sports and otherwise? Yes, absolutely. Do they still today? Yes. Narrowmindedness still exists.

But, women aren't alone. I actually took notice recently when the youth team I helped coach had three African American boys on the same hockey line. It's that rare, still.

The ad didn't mention Title IX. And I don't think JBS or any of the others are lying. They were speaking from personal experience.

I'm glad my 12 yo daughter saw the ad on TV the other night. And I hope that when I'm 55, I'm still running close to 70 mpw.

Stan

ssilvert wrote:The ad didn't mention Title IX. And I don't think JBS or any of the others are lying. They were speaking from personal experience.

I'm glad my 12 yo daughter saw the ad on TV the other night. And I hope that when I'm 55, I'm still running close to 70 mpw.

Stan

Good old Stan.

Stan, the entire Make The Rules campaign is celebrating the positive impact on women athletes of Title IX . They don't mention shoes, either, do you think they aren't trying to sell them?

And I never said anyone was lying. I said that women certainly were running - in public - and being competitive athletes - at the time Title IX was passed. In fact, the running boom was very much under way by the time Title IX was expanded - in the courts - to cover intercollegiate sports.

I have no doubt that JBS was telling the truth based on her personal experiences. But, those were fueled by bias and hate, not discrimination by institutions of higher learning receiving federal funding.

Martin VW wrote:

ssilvert wrote:The ad didn't mention Title IX. And I don't think JBS or any of the others are lying. They were speaking from personal experience.

I'm glad my 12 yo daughter saw the ad on TV the other night. And I hope that when I'm 55, I'm still running close to 70 mpw.

Stan

Good old Stan.

Stan, the entire Make The Rules campaign is celebrating the positive impact on women athletes of Title IX . They don't mention shoes, either, do you think they aren't trying to sell them?

And I never said anyone was lying. I said that women certainly were running - in public - and being competitive athletes - at the time Title IX was passed. In fact, the running boom was very much under way by the time Title IX was expanded - in the courts - to cover intercollegiate sports.

I have no doubt that JBS was telling the truth based on her personal experiences. But, those were fueled by bias and hate, not discrimination by institutions of higher learning receiving federal funding.

Good old MVW. You said the ad was historically flawed. It's not. It doesn't mention Title IX and it doesn't make any historically inaccurate statements.

I don't think Nike is above bending history to sell shoes. But to be fair, this ad doesn't do that.

Stan

Martin VW wrote:It IS a great video. But, it's historically a little flawed.

While we have come to know it best for its impact on sports, Title IX actually had more to do with the civil rights movement than women's rights. The intent was to make it illegal to discriminate - against any group - in terms of access to higher education. Title IX didn't contain any specific reference to interscholastic/intercollegiate sports until later in the 70's.

My older sister was a four sport star in HS before Title IX - basketball, softball, field hockey and track. She was as determined and aggressive and competitive - and accepted - as anyone in her era, male of female. No one was telling her she shouldn't compete.

Focusing for just a moment on Joan Benoit Samuelson, Joan was 10 when Kathrine Switzer ran Boston - and while she was the first to wear a bib, she certainly wasn't the first to run it.

By the time Joan was 15, the pressure was strong enough that women were officially allowed to enter, two months before Title IX was passed.

So when she says "when I was growing up girls just didn't run in public," well, that may have been true in many many parts of the country, but it wasn't a universal truth. 100 miles from Boston? Geez, I dunno. Would love to hear Michele 1L's comments on what it was like in New England then. Joan probably heard that from some people sitting on their porches in Maine. And Title IX didn't drive that change, Frank Shorter did (also 40 years ago).

Have women struggled for equality in this country, in sports and otherwise? Yes, absolutely. Do they still today? Yes. Narrowmindedness still exists.

But, women aren't alone. I actually took notice recently when the youth team I helped coach had three African American boys on the same hockey line. It's that rare, still.

I grew up in Massachusetts. It was around 1975 when I joined the track team as a 7th grader, so yes, girls could run in public. But we were still being taught half-court basketball in gym class. Even though there were women running marathons, the longest track event for women in the Olympics was the 1500. By the time I graduated college in 1985, things were very different. My teammates and I had been coached in track for years, whereas our predecessors, while talented, had been walk-ons or came from another sport (like your sister). The men's coaches began to take us seriously, and the men's and women's programs became more integrated, both in training and competition. For example, it wasn't until my sophomore or junior year that we could compete in the NCAA with the men. Before that we went to a separate championship in the EAIAW. Have you heard of the EAIAW? There's a marked difference in prestige.


Yes, there were strong, talented, competitive female athletes out there before Title IX, but they did not have the same opportunities to train and compete as males did. Women's teams were either non-existent or treated as inferior. Title IX forced institutions to take women's athletics seriously.

I grew up in Massachusetts also and went to a large public high school. Although we had a track team, we did not have a girls XC team and we had to run with the boys. I then went to Wellesley College, a Woman's school, and we only had basketball, swim, crew, and volleyball teams. We did push for a recognized XC team as many of us ran and the Greater Boston league would let us "compete" as independents in the club meets against the other Boston area colleges like BU, BC, Tufts, Harvard, Simmons and MIT. None of them except maybe BU and BC had a lot of women's teams either - mostly swimming and crew.

I ran on the roads in high school and although we often got strange looks, the Boston Marathon runs through my hometown, so it was not thought of as that odd by the late 1970s. I graduated high school in 1979 and college in 1983. Joanie is 5 yrs older than me, and she was training in Wellesley in the early 1980s when her husband was attending Babson College. I was often mistaken for her (we are both smaller with short dark hair - tells you how uneducated the locals can be), but it was not thought of as odd to run on the roads especially in a town with a woman's college.

And yes, Title IX really had nothing to do with women, it just was set to equalize things across the board in all areas of sport. It just so happened that it brought funding for women's teams to the forefront.

This commercial to me, is really more about being proud to be an athletic girl/women. I cannot tell you how many times I was asked as that young women if my uterus would fall out or if I would not be able to have children because I was active. Stereotypes don't die easily.

Michele "1L" Keane wrote:This commercial to me, is really more about being proud to be an athletic girl/women.

That's what I felt when I watched it! Thanks for sharing Michele! I hadn't seen this commercial until you posted it.

I am only two years younger than Michele, but when I entered Waltham
High in 1978, there were girls' teams for track and cross country. Had I
been a few years older, I would have had to run with the boys. I never
would have had the experience of going to regionals and All States,
which helped prepare me for the higher level of competition I faced in
college.

There is a funny situation going on with Title IX in Massachusetts right now. For some reason, swimming has always been a fall and winter sport for high school girls, but only a winter sport for boys. Lately some competitive boys wanted to swim in the fall as well, so they invoked Title IX and swam on girls' teams - and, not surprisingly, some of them won girls' state titles and broke records. The body that governs high school sports was ready to eliminate fall swimming altogether, but I think the final solution was to hold a separate championship meet for boys in the fall, even though there would not be many participants.

From experience being in high school prior to title 9 I can tell you that being on the track team meant nothing to anyone but the gals on it. My specialities were long jump and 400 relay. No uniforms, no real training outside of our PE class and what the coach asked us to do on our own. When we would compete against another high school, we would just be exhibition prior to the boy's meets. There was no tallying of scores or best track team, you just went out that day and did your events. That was the end of it.

We were invisible as a team at school, but my father still recalls going to the various track meets that I participated in with fond memories and I can recall putting some miles in running around the blocks of my neighborhood for my own training.

Title 9 was a big step for sports! Being a young woman in highschool in the early 70's saw a lot of changes. I consider myself lucky to have grown up during a period when women were pushing forward.

Michele "1L" Keane wrote: I cannot tell you how many times I was asked as that young women if my uterus would fall out or if I would not be able to have children because I was active. Stereotypes don't die easily.

Wow. Just wow. And that wasn't really that long ago.

healdgator wrote:

Michele "1L" Keane wrote: I cannot tell you how many times I was asked as that young women if my uterus would fall out or if I would not be able to have children because I was active. Stereotypes don't die easily.

Wow. Just wow. And that wasn't really that long ago.

When I was around 10 or so (1977), I used to go to a neighbor's house after school until my parents got home. One day I told the woman there that I wanted to do more sports (I was skating and swimming a lot then) and she told me with a lot expressions of concern and sincerity that I should be very careful because, if I did too much of that, I might not be able to have children.

Kick ass ad!! Love it, I can already see if Lisa and I have a daughter that very well could be her attitude "I just want to play ball"!!

just had 5 young ladies in my home office and showed them this commercial. All are athletes including a US national champion figure skater. Not one of them knew anything about title IX. They do now. Great ad, even if a little manipulated. I have no problem with that. Its a positive message.