How Vintage Nike Ads Kept Me Off Prozac

This page is yellowed with age, wrinkled from at least a dozen moves, and stained with mysterious drops which could be anything from tears to beer.  It has been taped to dorm room walls, lost in precious memory boxes, emblazoned across my fridge with kitsch magnets, and currently graces my office bulletin board where I can read it every day.

These pages were a part of a phenomenal print ad campaign which ran during some the most formative and tumultuous times of my life, those last years of high school and early college.  Angst filled years when I didn't fit in with any crowd.  Insecure years when I doubted not only my external beauty but the depth of what was hidden inside.   Experimental years when I vacillated between the girl I was and the woman I wanted to become.   Years when I made terrible mistakes and lifelong friends as I lost both my innocence and my mind at  times. 





These ads spoke to me, were written for me, they were modern day mantras that boosted my spirits and kept me from drowning myself in vodka or Prozac.  I actually changed my major from journalism to advertising as these ads flooded the pages of my Vogue, Cosmopolitan, and Rolling Stone magazines.  I too wanted to create edicts of empowerment for the women of the world.

But the power of persuasion can work for both good and evil.  Most advertisements, whether print, television or online, tell women we are never thin enough, not attractive or sexy enough,  and we have horrible hair.  We drive a car our kid's hate and our husbands must not love us since they don't give us expensive jewelry in front of a roaring fire.   Their message is clear: we are not good enough.

Nike told us we were.

And 20 years later, we still are.  

Thanks, Nike.