Reebok EasyTone Shoes Represent Dishonest, Shaming Advertising

Get fit, get fab, get fat-shamed!

Advertising is a favored target for the modern feminist, fond of critiquing the use of sex to sell non-sexual ideas (see: PETA) and creating an exploitative industry that thinks the hidden meaning of double entendres will be lost on viewers (see: Toyota). While sexism in TV and print advertisement is nothing new, one can’t help but wonder what’s with the influx of completely tasteless (and, indeed, inaccurate) ads.

Consider the launch of the new “Easy Tone” sneakers by Reebok. Piggybacking off the success of Avon and Curves’ joint venture, other shoe retailers, including Skechers, are catching on and offering their own brand of the funky-soled shoe, bragging that it burns more calories and tones while the wearer merely walks in them. Though these claims were debunked by the New York Times earlier this month, the companies are launching an ad blitz in the upcoming weeks, planning around 3,000 cable slots prior to the Christmas holiday alone.

The question remains as to how companies can continue to make incredibly bogus claims about products that don’t live up to the hype. Reebok, the worst offender, relies on sexism and insecurity to hook the female demographic. Each commercial is seemingly directed by a hormonal 15-year-old, with lots of panning on the attractive (and thin) female spokesperson’s presumably well-toned butt, thighs and breasts. There’s also lots of promotion of the bare female form, woman-on-woman violence (“78 percent of women will be jealous!” one ad brags) and the groovy notes of a pornographic-sounding saxophone that would be more fitting in a lingerie commercial.

In other words, women are actively discouraged from taking part in two of the most popular sports among their demographic. Which might be forgiven if the shoe were being marketed as a walking shoe, but Reebok is careful to market the shoe as a fitness product, implying it would be usable in running.

Reebok has defended the label, despite the claims stomping the viability of the product. According to the consumer activist blog Citizens Report, Reebok insists it has collected 15,000 hours worth of wear-test data from shoe users who say they noticed a difference. However, Citizens Report counters that only five individuals were used in the single, unpublished study. As Jessica of Feministing remarks, “The real effect may come from simple awareness that they are wearing a muscle-activating shoe, causing them to walk more briskly and with purpose.”

Reebok is hardly the first offender to tout science as a reason to buy what is obviously a worthless product, particularly one aimed at the insecurity of what women are conditioned to believe are their most important assets. Just a few years ago, both Promise and Too Faced launched lines of lipgloss that would allegedly help individuals to lose weight simply by puckering up. Too Faced, which partnered with Coca-Cola to spangle the diet drink label of Fuze across the tube, promotes the weight loss as a result of calcium-potassium salt of hydroxycitric acid (HCA for short). According to the mad scientists behind Beauty Brains, a website dedicated to investigating and explaining how cosmetics are made, tested and advertised, while the Slenderize Guilt-Free does contain HCA, it isn’t likely to have enough to make a difference, explaining:

“According to their study, researchers saw weight loss when test subjects ingested about 5 grams of the chemical 3 times a day. That’s a total of 15 grams each day. An average tube of lip gloss is .25 to .5 ounces, which is about 7 to 14 grams. So, if Fuze was 100% HCA you’d have to use almost an entire tube a day to get the weight loss benefit. But it probably contains much less than 100%. If it’s only 10% HCA, you’d have to use 10 tubes per day! And if it was only 1%…well, you do the math.”

Considering Too Faced’s Slenderize retails at the not-so-skinny price of $18.50, going through nearly a dozen tubes a day is rather impractical. Yet the larger issue is that the products don’t work, the company knows they don’t work, and they continue marketing it as an easy way to lose weight anyway.

Essentially, the dishonest marketing is motivated by a much larger hunger: the social belief that being thin is so important, it must ultimately impact every product a woman decides to consume. The smirking, patronizing tone of advertisements is clear. Women, we’re giving you all the tools you need to be thin–but it’s up to you to pay the outrageous prices to make your ideal body happen. And for women that don’t want to pay out $110 for a pair of sneakers or $20 for a small tube of lipgloss that don’t even work, they’re shamed into for failing to think highly enough of themselves to put their agonized wallet where their underprivileged mouth is.

In this respect, diet drinks can almost be forgiven for their shameless promotion and sham results, because at least the focus of weight loss is in the appropriate spectrum. Women aren’t being asked to feel guilty for wearing Blistex lip balm or New Balance tennis shoes. However, in the end, most diet drinks don’t work either, and still suggest predatory advertising with the graphics of toned actors offering testimony of how gulping down a glass of carrot juice helped them look like Britney Spears (post 2007 VMA).

The reality is, advertising represents one of the last bastions in the clamor for equal treatment of all races, religions and creeds. Commercial advertising, by and large, represents the more casual attitudes of what individuals think, believe and enjoy (see: Kevin Bacon and VISA from the 2002 Super Bowl). In other words, advertising not only influences our more casual perspectives, but is often their reflection.

Janice Turner, of The Times Online, asked earlier this year, “Does casual sexism matter any more? Aren’t we all too cool and liberated to care?” She then proceeds to explain why casual sexism, including in advertising, must absolutely be cared about and confronted.

“So much hate begetting further self-hate — food disorders, self-harming, the constant, low-level buzz of a woman’s unhappiness with her body. Hate that leads only to a “kerching!” in the tills of plastic surgeons. Indeed, the clinics that profit from women’s insecurities deserve a whole category of shame. Scanning the back of women’s magazines, you learn about parts of your body you hadn’t even thought about hating. “Areola reduction”, “genital reshaping”, “eyelid correction”… Meanwhile “Hannah, 28” says that cosmetic surgery is “the best thing I have ever done”.”

To those playing at home, don’t be fooled; Turner is merely asking the question from a tongue-in-cheek perspective. The first step is demanding that companies stop relying on junk (or, in the case of Reebok’s EasyTone, no) science that ultimately stigmatizes women, particularly as disembodied body parts who are uniformly present to service the needs of men (however indirectly; see: Guinness). Especially since so many of these products tend to hype up fat-shaming to a level that even Ingrid Newkirk dare not stoop. Indeed, if citizens start voting with their wallets by boycotting such products, companies that engage in such unscrupulous practices will have little choice but to pay attention and respect the demographics they have traditionally ignored.

Next is to spread the word. Most companies now offer feedback options on their websites, inviting consumers to submit their feedback on items from the website’s layout, to the company’s product and yes, even advertising. Many blogs hosted through free sites like BlogSpot and LiveJournal are dedicated to critically examining the implications of advertising in America, and will gladly take on the opportunity to expose commercials that are ethically compromised. Grassroots activism had a lot to do with getting the aforementioned Toyota commercial removed.

Finally, individuals need to be aware the advertisements really do represent societal attitudes and prejudices. When a commercial airs, or appears in print that is offensive to the intellectual palate, it’s important to draw attention to what causes the offense. It shouldn’t be reduced to someone not taking a joke, but rather being angry that companies are willing to pay top dollar to other companies to tell us we aren’t measuring up to their static identities (and expect we won’t notice their misleading information or out-right lies).

WEIGH IN: What advertisements strike you as unethical?