Overweight Kids in Advertisements: What’s Your Opinion?
Kudos to 12-year-old Nathan Sorrell. You may have seen him during the Olympics. He wasn’t in the Olympics; he was advertised during the Olympic games.
Nathan is a 5’3”, 200-pound 12-year-old who appeared in an ad for Nike where he is seen jogging down a lonely country road. While he runs, a voice over tells viewers to “find their inspiration.” Seeing Nathan jogging is indeed inspiring, and the image is what many Americans need.
The problem for Nathan is that he has received a lot of national attention and not all of it has been complimentary. While some viewers applaud him for putting himself out there, others have criticized Nike for exploitation, and Nathan has received personal criticism and humiliation. The question is, was it right for Nike to put him on the air or was it a simple matter of using him to get attention for their shoes?
When his mother was interviewed on The Today Show, she seemed surprised by the negative attention, saying that she didn’t realize that it would come. Really? You put your overweight son in an advertisement during the Olympics showcasing highly sculpted young bodies and don’t expect viewers to criticize him? When Nathan was asked how he has handled the criticism, he said in extraordinarily mature fashion, that he has only been motivated more by it. Good for him.
As a pediatrician, I am thrilled to see a young man like Nathan, and I think that the country needs to see his courage, demeanor, and positive spirit. In spite of those ready to chew him up and spit him out, he’s working to better himself and to overcome his own demons. That takes tremendous courage. How many 12-year-old boys can use humiliation as a source of motivation? Not many. I wonder if many medal-winning Olympians used the same as motivation to succeed. For them, however, humiliation was private, and there’s a big difference.
Nike knew exactly what they were doing and didn’t care a lick about Nathan (or any overweight 12-year-old). They exploited him because their goal is to do one thing: sell expensive shoes. Should they have used him in the ad? Absolutely not. He’s a kid, and kids need to be protected from public humiliation, even if it motivates them to do good for themselves.
We have a very serious issue with obesity in kids, and we need to hit it head on. Ironically enough, we have it because kids are used as targets of aggressive marketing of fast food, junk foods, and “super-sized” foods. Now we use those same kids to campaign to get out of those problems? Personally, I think that’s perfect marketing strategy.
There’s only one problem—it hurts our kids, and we need to speak out for them.
Using kids to make money is never OK.
That’s my opinion. What do you think?
3 Responses to “Overweight Kids in Advertisements: What’s Your Opinion?”
I think it all starts in the home, and it seems his mother was looking for money too. Shame on her.
First of all, I’d like to say “nice job!” to Nathan and that I hope his strength and motivation stay with him throughout his life. Second, while it is naive to expect people to behave differently, shame on anyone who would make degrading comments to or about this child, publicly or privately. Even if it is in your own home, if anyone can hear you, you are hurting someone. And finally, one idea to improve the questionable decision by Nike is perhaps for the company to turn this into a campaign in which they provide free or low cost shoes to fitness programs for children in need, or maybe to/through elementary and middle schools. Thanks Dr. Meeker!
I see an awful lot of overweight people walking around these days. Not just adults but kids too. I find it interesting that you are shaming Nike for supposedly humiliating the kid with their advertisements. As a RN, I applaud Nike for having the guts to speak up about kids and obesity. The truth is that overweight people live their daily lives in humiliation when they can’t participate in activities like sitting in a movie seat this is humiliation. I think if health care providers are going to make an impact on childhood obesity we are going to have to more honest about it and part of it is marketing campaigns like this Nike commercial. What’s sad is that people are so willing to throw around criticism of others. I’m certain the boy and the mom are concerned about his weight issue. Instead of offering criticism of what is REALITY, we should be motivated to do our part to help are patients, friends and communities.