As The Beatles said, we all want to change the world. For women and girls sports is one powerful tool and area of self-development to be able to take part in, a hobby or profession, healthwise a good decision throughout all of one’s life, but something your own always, as we all have personal likings and what we are good at, but good is to understand you don’t have to be good at it. Comparisons when doing sports are hard to avoid I have noticed. It is not a competition. It is something to concentrate on, focus and have fun. Because that’s what it is. In a world where everything is a competition, do try to get over yourself.
Revolution is a performance which to succeed must be planned carefully, but there is an element of irrational and emotional without which the whole thing may not work, I suppose passion for a cause, a necessity. There has to be agenda, plan, people who are committed to the cause without self-interest involved, what else? Something being very wrong, unequal and people don’t want to be told what to do. Planning must exceed way up to the future in order revolution to function as bettering of people’s lives not against people, which I see now happening. A completely new way of making and thinking which all must absorb in their lives and accept. It is the impression we give wanting equal rights, is that we really want, thoughts shared, thoughts not censored, the side we take plays a big part, part we play today either silent for fear or not, the acts we commit and we choose to perform and for what cause which must be chosen wisely, for whose benefit do we work, buy, do anything. With this I claim every act is a revolution of its own or a continuation, better or worse, frency doesn’t seem to help. Active part-taking in society and especially in one’s own life make society, passivity does that very much too, scared silent passivity or uninterested passivity. Changes in our lives, in our bodies, in our minds, change our environment which impact of one person can be quite much. Everyone is an influencer. How we see it, the environment and our chances as makers and thinkers, how we see the change today and what is it. These days if we cannot part-take, have a say over and are shut out, fear easily comes along. Today a person can suddenly lose everything for a tweet and have so-called global fame.
An individual performance performed by many, performance which all still do individually becoming as good as possible by doing this performance over and over again. Performing may be at the same time at the same place done by many people who choose to act the same way, running. NIKE has Revolution brand for sports shoes. Evolution of a shoe is itself pretty huge and quick, how well shape of a foot can be supported, which brings something more to the individual performance, adds its power to the individual and what he/she is doing, how well they do what they do. We have such good shoes, but we don’t move much. Shoes being the accessory and luxury items instead of practical things making us move better. Nike’s is a lifestyle ad of course for the well-off Westerners, a product for ‘forward’ thinking people, I suppose is the idea, where you try to find with help of a product the best there is in you for you, so you can show your best, be the best, look your best, be better, compete, achieve, perform and look good and repeat this with lots of other products by brands that perform their best. Shoes make you jump and run well, because they are light, fit your foot perfectly, become part of you as you move as hard and heavy as you can and go further than what you expected perhaps. Revolution the word in products is what makes people do? They get shaped and fixed to fit perfectly the performance, the intent and purpose, people buying and wearing the revolution shoes. Better is a bit strange word here, but I’ll use it, because it describes the essential aim, essential and we want to think what is good and always be better at, better than. Technology and tools play a big part in making the most out of people and resources. People have to know what to choose, what to buy and how to use the products.
It is a kind of peaceful revolution until you start thinking further about making of those shoes and choices the consumers must make and what do they know. Who chooses for you for example. How nowadays it is so that almost all sportswear is made in Asia still, maybe soon in African nations, with the help of extremely cheap labor, the corporations have grown massive, which fact makes ad revolutions sad cases and interesting ones culturally. Revolution in this context begins to sound ridiculous (think about the first Apple ad), pompous and really really effective,
but thinking females who aren’t allowed to do sports and today men invading the whole of women’s sports as women, that is men as women. How much does it cost to make an adequate sports shoe that we who like to sculpt our bodies by running can consume and enjoy? It is a fact that industry in Asia is lucrative and locals benefit from it too in many ways, and in some ways they get the worst textile industry has to offer, pollution, long days of work, low pay, lack of day care, use of child labor, inhumane working conditions nonstop without nothing changing etc. How is it with NIKE? Do you really care or what is this revolution about? Sales? Being trendy? Growth for business and muscles? Not labor rights. Many movements we are experiencing now are influencing on trend level. Hype and groupthink grow astronomical, impact the youth in a huge same way as clothing and beauty businesses do. Brainwash isn’t far-fetched.
In Asia it is exactly the same as it was in the West when textile industry was a big employer and worker rights were not at the same level as they are now. Businesses go elsewhere to escape legislation, environmental and labor legislations and labor costs, industry is doing a service and disservice at the same time, the biggest disservice is for the environment and the worker in the West. I do like shoes that I can afford, but still as a thought everything is made in China is the problem’s name on large scale. We have made China very powerful. We had a revolution, many of them in a row nonstop, but so did many countries in Asia, China included. World is a result of revolutions that impact still. Revolution is a tool for the mind. Interesting thing about revolution is that it can be anything, nowadays there is someone telling something is a revolution, but of course you need a movement and results and events and whatnot. The efforts made to change the world seem tiny when looking at the environment and labor. What kind of results are we having right now? Does naming an event help? Does naming happen before or after event happens and what happened, who reports, what is happening exactly now? Revolution in use in advertising does strike an interesting string of paradoxes and makes me think, what do we mean with the word and the event. What is our obsession with the word? Events aren’t much fun, fun isn’t what revolutions are after.