Imagine this if you can;
You’re sitting in the airport waiting for your flight just watching the people as they pass by. Quite a few are wearing some form of athletic gear with some individuals prominently displaying the brand logo on the garment. Pretty much everywhere you look you’ll see the Nike ‘Swish’, the Adidas ‘pyramid’, the New Balance ‘N’ etc…. This clothing includes jerseys, warm up pants, tennis shoes, hats, jackets, socks and anything else that can cover the human body.
All of these logos or ‘marketing icons’ are tools that normalize our minds to the brand and institute some form of brand loyalty. When I say normalize I mean that when I go to buy athletic apparel, because I’ve seen the ‘Swish’ in a continuous bombardment of media plus its prominent displayed on countless individuals, I automatically associate athletic apparel with a ‘Swish’ and therefore think Nike.
What I find interesting about the airport is that it seems that most of the bodies that are filling athletic apparel are in a ‘less than optimal’ condition. In fact, what I commonly observe at the airport is that the obese and slovenly types have a propensity toward wearing this type of garment. Not only do these folks tend toward athletic wear, they are also the ones that wear garments that include logo’s that blare out, I’M MANUFACTURED BY ………...
Now let’s continue down our imagery path;
You see this rather large fellow ‘squeeeeeeeze’ into a waiting area chair and balance a 20 oz. Coke on his vast belly as he eats his personal pizza from the airport Pizza Hut. As he bits down the grease and cheese slither out of the corner of his mouth and dribble down the front of the ‘Swish’ stretched across his immense girth.
Hey, nothing says it better; fat guy, slob with a ‘Swish’ icon across his torso. Do the marketers want me to forgo the gym and O.D. on pizza sauce? Makes me want to run out and buy Nike products to go to the gym. Maybe that’s why I buy Russell Athletic wear; I’ve never seen their ‘R’ icon with pizza stains.
Knowing that I’ve broken several taboos’ I’d like to put a few things square;
- big people look tremendously better in dressy attire, e.g. jackets and ties, dresses with hosiery, slacks with casual dress shoes
- manners and grooming can ‘bend light’ and make all appear normal
- athletic clothing belongs in the gym, on a bicycle, on the soccer field or in your back yard and is NOT appropriate as airport garb, church attire or general public display
So why do the athletic clothing manufacturers keep their mills cranking out the XXXL sizes? Do they want to normalize the acceptance of being ‘size challenged’? Is this the manufacturer’s commitment to a conspiracy that condemns baby boomers to slow horrifying deaths fighting obesity, heart failure and diabetes? Are the Nike’s and Adidas’ of the world in cahoots with the suppliers of ‘trans fats’ and ‘high fructose corn syrup’ in an FDA Food Pyramid sponsored effort to readjust the population?
Only time will tell.
MMJennings
