Nurses Inject Their Distaste for Shoe Manufacturer's Provocative Ads
by Allie Martin
August 11, 2004
(AgapePress) - A nursing advocacy group is asking a well-known shoemaker to pull print ads featuring pop singer Christina Aguilera in suggestive poses.The Center for Nursing Advocacy (CNA) is protesting a new global ad campaign by shoemaker Skechers. The ads feature pop star Christian Aguilera as a "naughty" nurse dressed in a short uniform, white stockings, and a garter belt. Sandy Summers, executive director of the CNA, says the ads are degrading to the nursing profession.
"We're objecting [because] it shows that nurses are there to fulfill the sexual needs of patients and physicians instead of the work of professionals," Summers explains. "And what self-respecting person would want to study for years in college so they could go and perform sex slave work?"
The ad campaign also features Aguilera as a teacher and a police officer -- in provocative attire. Summers is concerned about the image the "naughty nurse" ad conveys.
"We're hard-working professionals, and we save and improve lives every day," she says. "We want the public to understand what we do, and we want accurate depictions -- not these continued, inaccurate 'naughty nurse' and 'handmaid' and 'battleaxe' depictions."
In a press release, the Center for Nursing Advocacy notes that harmful media images of nurses affect how people thing and act, just as media portrayals of other health-related matters have been shown to do. The nursing group have been successful in the past in its efforts to remove similar "naughty nurse" advertising images created by such companies as Disney, Clairol, and Pennzoil. According to CNA, more than a thousand nurses have written to protest the ad in the Skechers campaign's first few days.
The group has also received support for its stand on the ad campaign from the American Family Association, a Mississippi-based pro-family group that regularly contacts its supporters about questionable commercials and advertisements, encouraging them to contact the advertisers. AFA says the Skechers ads "[make] a mockery of professional women and choose to portray them as sex objects, which undermines their value in the workplace."
