It’s a crazy-ass world out there lately, with political rhetoric flying around faster than a monkey slinging poo. A quick trip to our
News + Views section bears evidence of that.
Sometimes, though, you can weed through all the bullshit and find something good. Don't believe me? Take Nike's new commercial — the first ever with a transgender athelete — as proof.
Chris Mosier, the first transgender Olympian, breaks the fourth wall and speaks directly to the commercial's narrator and the audience about the realities of being a transgender athlete on Team USA. His challenges to the International Olympic Committee rules about transgender athletes resulted in new policies this year, allowing him to compete as a man on Team USA.
Nike capitalizes on this in its commercial, first aired during the Olympics on August 8, and part of me — the cynical part — wants to protest a corporation profiting off this. After all, this isn't about altruism; it's a shrewd business move. Nike's capitalizing on equality. Those bastards.
The the other part of me — the realist — realizes that of all the things corporations have used for profit, they're using tolerance, equality and acceptance for profit. That means this commercial signifies something greater than profit: It means acceptance has become currency.
I think I'm OK with that.
This article appears in Aug 4-11, 2016.
