Running Mad Men

The proverbial torch has been passed to Rio and the stadiums are dark in London as the once-every-four years athletic spectacular spectacular has packed up shop. The 2012 Olympics was one filled with firsts – from the plethora of record breaking to the media’s utter fascination with and then quickly pivoted condemnation of a swimmer whose intellectual prowess seems to suggest that he’d be just as much at home talking to the fish as swimming with them. Not to mention the utterly astonishing knowledge that this is the first year women have been represented by all countries and in all events (hell yeah woman boxers!). Love it or hate it, the Olympics is one of the few things that we as a global community have to celebrate as one people, and its power and importance is unparalleled.
   

Source: Jordan Burroughs

Leaving the fanfare, the spectacle, and parental hand-wringing aside, there’s a darker side to these most prestigious games. Woe be the tale of Olympic Marketing. The Great and Powerful Olympic committee is notorious for staunchly guarding any trademark infringement, keeping the image of those awe inspiring rings under lock and key seemingly rivaled only by the most oppressive of tyrannies. I mean, I heard a rumor that this year they locked offenders in the Tower of London, strapped into an Iron Maiden, only to be let out once they'd renounced everything they believed before and swore allegiance to the one true torch. Or something like that, I may be fuzzy on the details. 

This being said, one of the interesting things to come out of the 2012 Olympic games was Nike’s guerilla ad campaign. Not granted officially sanctioned Olympic sponsorship, they were not allowed to actively use any logo or phrasing resembling the Olympics in any of their ads. This didn’t stop them from making their omnipresence known though. I mean, we all couldn’t take our eyes off those hideously neon green shoes adorning the feet, and therefore the victories, of so so many runners. And then there was the subsequent commercials banking on the concept of “Finding Your Greatness” – whether that greatness be demonstrated by Olympians or by their lesser known, but by no means lesser esteemed, everyday counterparts. One ad in particular drew an unexpected amount of attention, but for all the wrong reasons. Here is Nike’s version of the story of Nathan Sorrell from London, Ohio.
   

    

   

Nathan is twelve years old, 5 foot 3 inches tall, and weighs 200 pounds. In this ad, we are told, in the soothing honey tones of Tom Hardy’s voiceover, that “Somehow we’ve come to believe that greatness is a gift reserved for a chosen few. For prodigies. For superstars. And the rest of us can only stand by watching.” I can actually get behind this. I mean, we’re not all meant for Greatness with a capital G. If we were all great, then who would we have to compare ourselves to and thus define our greatness. If we’re all superlatives, then there are no longer superlatives. We thus knock greatness down to the level of the norm.

Hardy continues: “You can forget that. Greatness is not some rare DNA strand. It’s not some precious thing. Greatness is no more unique to us than breathing. We’re all capable of it. All of us.” Ahhh, ok I see. This is coming together a little more clearly. We all have within us the ability to be great, it’s just up to us to realize it.

Let’s look at Nathan. This kid, now thrust into the national spotlight, is having his journey for attaining this idea of Greatness put on display. Nathan admits that before the shoot, he wasn’t a jogger, wasn’t an athlete. In fact, partway through shooting, the physical exertion was too much for him, and he threw up his lunch in a ditch. Does knowing this necessarily detract from the message at hand? More importantly I suppose, does this knowledge somehow make Nike’s ad men evil? One can't help but wonder how Nathan got on Nike's radar in the first place. Did they simply pluck him from the probably depressingly large pool of overweight children who showed up? Was it his good fortune of living in a town called London? Or was he picked for his story of personal struggles with weight loss and gain? Given that he got the job after showing up for a casting call for a husky kid with no speaking lines, and wasn't picked through some peer or community nomination process, I'm guessing Nathan just fit into Nike's predetermined ideal of what a chubby kid should look like jogging alone, on a deserted road, sweating.

Nathan has now stated that he and his mother are going to try to lose weight, through good old fashioned diet and exercise. He says that his role in the commercial has inspired him. This is probably a good thing. No, it is a good thing. Nike will even return to Ohio some time in the future and will film another spot with his family if they do lose the weight. This and the positive outpouring of support for Nathan has led lots of respectable folks to argue that no, “Nike is not abusing fat kids.” Meanwhile, the obese sympathizers (also respectable in their own right) assert that if Nathan now wants to “lose weight because the Nike Corporation put his fat body on display to sell shoes, then that's creepy and depressing” and have used the ad to further their cause of shining a light on the unfair treatment of the overweight by the I-don’t-get-what’s-so-hard-about-losing-weight-calories-in-calories-out-right-fatty? thin crowd. I’m not sure yet where I stand with either of these camps. I suppose I’m somewhere in the middle of the road, sleeping bag over one shoulder having missed the bus, and now left to wander the predator filled woods alone. Yes, that was a camping metaphor. Sorry, it's late and that's the best I've got right now.
   

I have to think long and hard about whether the ad is exploitative. After all, that is everyone's beef (get it? chunky people like cheeseburgers). Being skinny-challenged myself, when I saw the kid, slowly coming into focus, the outlines of his body coming clearer, I immediately thought “hell yeah little dude, tell the haters to suck it!” Then as the ad drew to a close, you can see Nathan struggling for breath, and in my head I could hear him huffing and puffing. My indignation turned to sadness. That heavy breathing was all too familiar. It was all too real. It’s what I hear when I get to the four minute mark trotting on a treadmill. It’s the noise I try desperately to hide as I struggle to pretend I’m totally fine while trudging up an incline behind my thin friends, hoping they don't become aware of the growing distance between us. Pro tip: fat people aren't really yawning while walking uphill, and whatever they stopped to look at isn't really there.
     

And that is what hit it home for me. Nathan Sorrell is a real person. He is not an invention born out of a smokey board room, where men with rolled up sleeves brainstorm and shout out ideas. This kid has a life to go back to after this which doesn’t just fade to black. Those media folks trying so desperately to make him a symbol of something don't seem to be bothering themselves with what happens now.

One can’t help but wonder about his first day back at school. His Facebook friends list has doubled in size - no doubt equal parts supporters, looky-loos, and cyber-trolls. Yet how would his brick-and-mortar friends treat him? And oh gosh, what will the bullies do? Would they have a field day with him? 
     

youtube commentors are awesome

The internet jerks already have. Read this article if you have a strong stomach. It’s one writer’s compilation of some of the awful fat-bashing comments the youtube video has produced. It’s a tough read. Why making fun of fat people is socially acceptable is beyond comprehension. We're the last remaining group that doesn't have hate crime protection. I have friends that make fat jokes in front of me (or on social media sites where maybe they don’t realize I can see them) without blinking an eye. It’s somehow ok to them. Maybe since I’m not morbidly obese they think I’m somehow disconnected from the others they are making fun of, but I really think that’s giving them too much credit. Come the first of the year, I dread those inevitable Facebook comments from regular gym goers lamenting the "New Year's Resolutioners" who have taken up all the machines. As if your assertions that their new found momentum won't last is in any way beneficial and not devastatingly hurtful. Yeah, you're stronger willed than other people, and you should be commended for that. It doesn't make you better though, it just makes you different. The large have different circumstances to deal with. I'm not sure if people realize that one of the main reasons you don't see more chubby people at the gym is not that we're lazy, it's that we're embarrassed. More specifically, we are terrified of your judgement. We see it in how you look at our oversized work out clothes, meant to hide the bodies we more than anything want to one day show off. We feel it as you tap your foot impatiently, waiting for the next available stationary bike. The way you wrinkle your nose, even if you don't realize you're doing it. Recently science and the media have begun making more strides to explain how depression and self-esteem can have just as much impact on your weight as what you eat. Thank goodness too, because I'm getting a little over it.

Once when I was in middle school, a little girl was telling me and another friend some story or other, and, I kid you not, she said “Oh, and this one woman was really fat” then turned, looked at me, held up a very polite hand, softened her eyes, and said “No offense.” This girl was maybe ten, and to be honest kind of an asshole (she kicked me in what I think she thought should be my testicles once too).

I've had waiters in fancy restaurants explain to me what it is I just ordered, as if the concept of fine dining is somehow foreign to me. "Now you know that fish isn't fully cooked right?" "Oh really? It's not like the Gordon's Fisherman? Cause them sticks is the only eatin' fish I know. Can you make sure they put a lot of ketchup on it?" Too bad they didn't tell the aging millionaire cowboy at the table next to me the same thing, because they could have avoided his loud "What the Hell?" when they plopped his seared tuna on the table in front of him. Other times I've had restaurant staff go out of their way to let me how their restaurant works so that I know what I'm in for. Just because their tiny minds can't believe that I've ever eaten anything that would fit on a "small plate" doesn't mean I don't understand tapas.

   

The worst part? They don't even realize how messed up the whole thing is. That little girl thought she was being nice to me. Those waiters thought they were helping me out, making sure the big girl wasn't sad when she only got two dumplings.

America’s weight problem is as much a societal issue as it is a personal one, and no one seems to be able to get it right. Either they're too mean or too sympathetic, and really, both are terrible. I've talked about it before, and surely will again (much to the chagrin of my thin readers). I know instead of just talking about it (or complaining as the eye-roller sect would call it), I should be doing something about it. Yet for me, working through the reasons I got myself in this mess in the first place is the most important step. It should be for every overweight person. Understanding how society treats us and how we should act in response (internally and externally) is just as important as how much ice cream we eat to make ourselves feel better about it. What dear sweet sweaty Nathan Sorrell does, more than anything, is contribute to the necessary dialogue of that push-pull place we're in between the haters and the motivators, and for that, I offer my praise and admiration. So at the same time is Nike's ad exploitative of big kids like him? Yeah, I think so.

Nike's main purpose is to sell to athletic types not to inspire couch potatoes. If the latter were the case, then their website would offer more than just eighteen pieces of plus size women's clothing total (they sell one hundred regular sized bras alone). Nike's failure to live up to it's grand statements isn't something that should come as a surprise though. It is, after all, a marketing ploy. It also should not, in any way, detract from the greatness that young master Sorrell found when, after puking in a ditch, he got back up and ran the rest of the way down that stupid lonely road.