I’ll never forget the stand off I had with my dad in the mall before the start of my eighth grade basketball season. Acquiring a pair of Nike Flight high tops, the same style and color that many of the other players on my team (the good ones, who unlike me would see significant playing time) was an issue of grave consequence. This particular pair of shoes was what I felt I needed to run with great speed and agility, jump to heights yet unknown, and otherwise simply be a “baller.”
My father wasn’t buying it…literally. As I broke down into tears my dad told me I could go sit in the car until the rest of the family was done shopping and wear the shoes I used last year. Or, I could accept the fact that he was not paying that much for a pair of shoes and chose another pair.
So much for Jesus’ words on earthly fathers not giving their children a stone when they asked for bread. As far as I was concerned my earthly Papa had just handed me a boulder—not getting these new shoes was social suicide.
It turned out my view on reality was not quit as clear in the heat of that moment as I thought it was. I got a different pair of shoes. I went on to score the same three total points for that season that I would have even if Michel Jordan himself would have lent me his kicks. I was not that good of a player and my shoes could not save me from my ill-aimed jump shot.
In the end I knew that. I knew that what I strapped to my feet would not have much impact on my performance, but I felt strongly that it would make a huge difference in my being accepted by the team. I worried I would be judged by the cool guys on the team and that felt like a curse. I just wanted to be liked and I was pretty sure that a pair of shoes would make the difference. Of course they wouldn’t and my dad knew that.
While watching the Chinese Woman (I mean little girls) cheat their way to gold in gymnastics this past week I was struck by this ad:
Seeing this ad was one of those moments where I thought to myself, “did they really just say that?” It is always striking when you see just how far a company like Wal-Mart will go to get you to buy their things. They are more than willing to play on our most basic insecurities as humans in order to move us to the cashier line with our arms full of bright yellow shirts that all the kids will love. What strikes me is this ad plays less on the fragile state of adolescents and more on the guilt of the parents who hold the purse strings and therefore, as far as Wal-Mart is concerned, the social wellbeing of their offspring. As a young parent myself, who is bracing for the impact of those first days of school for my boys, I know just how much I fear for my kids having to navigate the treacherous waters of the school hallways. But I pray that I don’t become a target for this kind of manipulation.
How totally void and empty is the promise made by this ad? How totally superficial can we get in thirty seconds?
When The Gap strung up a huge banner for Product(red) in their store window informing me that a T-shirt could “change the world” I chuckled a little...and then went in and bought one. Their claim to the saving power of a piece of clothes felt tongue-in-cheek. Their message had an irony to it (sure it’s just a shirt) but at least this one has a dream, vision, mission and purpose. Wal-Mart offers their shirts with a similar Messiah complex but this time it has nothing to do with who is making the clothes and where the proceeds are going. Wal-Mart wants us to believe that the right clothes is “all we need to be happy.”
If you are one of the people for whom this ad makes their skin crawl, might I offer a different way looking at clothes as we head into the Back-To-School season:
"…don’t fuss about whether the clothes in your closet are in fashion. There is far more to your outer appearance than the clothes you hang on your body. Look at the birds, free and unfettered, not tied down to a job description, careless in the care of God. And you count far more to him than birds."
- Jesus
