Mulvaney & Nike: excellent article on the mockery of women

Excellent article. It made me quite emotional. The part about the Dove advert really highlights that all the messaging we get about progress is just superficial bullshit. Nothing has changed. My daughters will grow up with the same pressures, in fact more, with all the photos and porn and having to believe that they are empowered when it’s a lie.

I agree with posters above. This isn’t DM’s fault. It’s Nike that are trolling us, he’s a pawn in all this. He’s just a useful idiot.

Thank you for that very powerful article by Victoria Smith. She is an excellent writer. I also got new trainers and didn’t buy Nikes. Discriminatory corporate values of total disrespect for their female customers.

Dylan though can be who Dylan wants to be.... I don't have a problem with Dylan, I DO have a problem with the people who employed Dylan to represent sporty-ness as Dylan is not at all sport or training focused.

BlackVelvetBand - that picture! Could DM look less like a woman? Women don’t feel like women, they just are women; we don’t gaze adoringly at tampons - we just need to use them

Great article OP, I wonder why on Earth Nike thought DV would have more cut through with women who buy sports kit than actual women doing actual sport.
🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄

Excellent article and I love that it doesn't focus all on criticising DM; it's about women and our relationship with our bodies. She puts words to everything I have always felt about my body but just couldn't articulate.

It enrages me that women's bodies aren't viewed as strong when we're the ones who go through childbirth. I've never felt more like a warrior than when I birthed my children, and I don't think any man will ever feel that strength and all-encompassing power.

No, of course he doesn’t. Just like he doesn’t need any sort of period product.

🙄 x a million.

But he does not need a sports bra anyway?

That is an excellent article, thank you for sharing. It articulated well the emotion behind the "be kind" mantra, when being kind is being complicit in acts that hurt and betray women.

Any woman mincing around like mulvey would be ridiculed. A woman would receive a litany of negative comments about the shape and size of her body, the way she choose to make it move, the way she displayed her emotions. But, when, a biological make does it, we are not only told that we must ‘be kind’ but we should be actively celebratory of it all.

If anyone actually believed the rhetoric about TWAW, the reaction would have been mockery and condemnation

Absolutely yes to this. It infuriates me that people - especially women - can’t see this.

Love it! Love it! Love it!
I also love the current Lloyds Bank advert with the girl on the bike.

Fuck whoever mocked you.

Try this:

This article was spot on. I also loved this Hilary Mantel quote, which I hadn’t heard before:
that “it ought to possible to live and thrive, without conforming, complying, giving in, but also without imitating a man”

that sums up for me the sadness I feel about so many girls identifying as men

This landed hard with me. I haven’t run a step in public since I left school, and tried all I could to avoid it even when I was a child.

When I was six, I was mocked for the way I ran. That was forty years ago and it’s still clear in my mind.

That is an excellent article. Helps me to articulate some very muddled thoughts and generalised outrage.

She doesn't treat women like that.

Thats the thing - and the clue that, for all the loud protesting otherwise, society in general in no way believes TWAW - no one treats women like they treat TW.

Any woman mincing around like mulvey would be ridiculed. A woman would receive a litany of negative comments about the shape and size of her body, the way she choose to make it move, the way she displayed her emotions. But, when, a biological make does it, we are not only told that we must ‘be kind’ but we should be actively celebratory of it all.

If anyone actually believed the rhetoric about TWAW, the reaction would have been mockery and condemnation

My teenage sporty daughter thinks this advert is really insulting to women. Not just a bit insulting, really insulting. There is a huge backlash amongst her friends and they love their Nike pro shorts - not any more though.

There is a petition on citizengo out there at the moment to boycott Nike
that is gathering signatures at the moment.

I hope that the backlash will make Nike think twice about who actually buys their clothes.

What a great article and really makes me think about my relationship with my body and sport. Especially my brother and step dad taking the piss about me running weirdly and not being able to kick a football.

I also bought new trainers. The Nike looked slightly prettier but I went with Adidas instead in the end.

surely Chloe Kelly should have got the Nike sponsorship?!?

The Chloe Kelly celebration will stay with me all my days. What women can do!

I bought new trainers today. Picked up a Nike pair, remembered this nonsense and bought another brand instead.

I wonder whose endorsement deal was worth more, Chloe Kelly or Dylan M.

Terrific article.

Made me a bit emotional. Once upon a time I really hoped for better things for DD’s generation. 😔

An excellent article indeed, thanks for the link,
The two photos alone say so much, even without text,
So sick of all the ridicule and mocking of women and girls,
Very depressing, on and on it goes.

Fantastic article - powerful and very moving:
"Women and girls should not be emotionally excluded from our own bodies. They are our space, our selves; they belong to no one else. Often, it is unsafe for us to say it, let alone feel it. We must grab every chance we can"