Two Letters to Off Our Backs (OOB) about Nike by Nikki Craft
7/24/93
A few years ago I had gladly stopped buying all the other brands of running shoes to support the approach that Nike began using with its womanist "Just Do It" advertising campaign. Then, several weeks ago, I saw a television exposé that documented Nike gets 100 some-odd dollars for one pair of shoes that only costs $5.95 to make. It revealed that Nike exploits workers in Indonesia, China, Thailand and Malaysia. Nike hurts workers here, too, since they moved all their manufacturing out of the US before 1984. In the exposé, obviously liberal Nike managers wiped sweat from their brows when it became obvious the reporters would not swallow the disinformation they attempted to pass off as reality, and then the ignorance they attempted to hide behind. Sure, it's easy to believe these white-boy Clinton types didn't know the horrid conditions their female workers were living under right outside the barbed wire prisons of the corporate "free" zones. Nike is spending lots of money to convince us to like them and to buy their shoes. They paid Michael Jordan $20 million to do a single Nike ad. If they had taken that 20 million and divided it among all their workers in Indonesian plants, their employees could all be jogged above the mean poverty level. All we'd have been spared was that one Nike ad. Today in the mail I got Nike's "Women's Source Book". Aimed at the modern woman, it's 46 color pages of Nike products were printed on slick, thick, recycled paper. The catalog warns women against repetition: "Doing the same activity over and over can become a real bore." When I saw that bourgeois white woman, stretching down to tie her laces, I thought of the women I saw on TV, many very young, enslaved by Nike, spending hours bent over, stitching those shoes--and thousands more. Many suffer from loss of eyesight, chronic back pain, a life of poverty and, yes, repetitive stress disorder.I've ripped up that Nike catalog and sent it back in their wrapping so they pay the return postage. Furthermore, I'm never going to buy another pair of Nike's "dirty sneakers" again and will encourage other women to boycott them, too. It's a very worthwhile tactic, but I don't have the financial resources to mail all my old shoes back to them. Instead, I'm marking through the Nike label on the shoes that I already have, and telling anybody and everybody why I'd choose to deface my own property. As it is with most corporations, knowing what I now know about Nike, I'd be ashamed to be seen wearing their products. We, myself included, have to get --and stay--wise to this. Nike's promotional policies and employment practices are not that far removed from other trans-national corporations, and we are going to be seeing a lot more of it if the North American Free Trade Agreement is enacted. Nike, and other corporations, have a lot of work to do if they are to become truly egalitarian beyond the hip-hype they portray on TV; and it's time for us to tell them to JUST DO IT. Fucking over our sisters in other parts of the world is not pro-woman, and it certainly isn't feminism. As feminists, our vision must be more encompassing and our political analysis much less superficial than to be persuaded to feel fondly towards a corporation just because its public relation efforts makes a greed motivated monster appear friendly and non-sexist. Dear oob editor: I am very grateful to oob for the work you do and appreciate tremendously the amount of my work that you choose to include in your newspaper. I know it's impossible to do what you do without making mistakes, several of which were made with the editing of the my letter as published in the Aug/Sept 1993 issue. First, I would like to say it was no small miracle the letter was printed in the first place. It was way too long. Also, it was FAXed during final layout and someone took the trouble to pick it up at another location and even paid for it! That it was so much into the eleventh hour may explain some of what happened in the editing process, too. The first three paragraphs were hacked off, the letter opening with, "I've ripped up that Nike catalog. . ." What Nike catalog?! Such an insensitive editing brings it out of the blue. The portion that was left out included imagery that I wanted very much for women to take away with them after reading the letter. The part about the woman bent over her sewing machine juxtaposed to the woman tying her shoe was the more important part of the letter to me. I also hated the en vogue Doc Marten boot used as an the illustration; and the cutsie slogan, "Give Nikke a hand, give Nike the boot," and "Nikki Nixes Nike," trivialized what I was saying. I'm not sure that whoever made the editorial and headline decisions understands what I was trying to say or accomplish with the letter. Even though I know they were well intentioned and sweetly affectionate, they inadvertently worked against the content of the letter. As always, women read oob. That's why I LOVE to have my stuff here. Unfortunately, this time I am embarrassed rather than proud. One woman said I sounded naive, one woman, probably since I often submit graphics, too, asked why I put a boot with a letter about Nike, and one said the letter didn't make any sense. It didn't. I hope you will consider reprinting my letter in full in your next issue along with this one. All my best, Off Our Backs did run both letters in full with an apology. Thursday, 22 February 2001 14:11 (ET) "Why not invite the local NGO's (non-governmental organizations) trained in monitoring to come in and do a code of conduct investigation," Bama Athreya, an ILRF official, told the Asian Wall Street Journal. A Nike statement said the company would ask for independent verification of the Global Alliance's latest report. Nike Links |