Branding being true: visibility politics and Nike’s engagement with LGBTQ+ communities

ABSTRACTIn this article, the author examines Nike’s engagement with LGBTQ + communities through its Be True products and campaigns. An analysis of Nike’s official statements about the line, and its advertising campaigns, illuminates how Nike encourages an incitement to visibility for LGBTQ + individuals without attending to the material consequences of doing so. The author also unpacks how Nike yokes the embodiment of idealized identity traits to its products, a process identified as commodity actualization. The goal is to highlight the role that market activities play in supplanting traditional activism and to make the unstable relationship between visibility, truth, and equality legible.KEYWORDS: LGBTQ+visibilitysports medianeoliberalismcommodity activism AcknowledgementsThe author thanks Dr. Hollis Griffin and Dr. Nicky Lewis for their thoughtful feedback and advice on this article, as well as the anonymous reviewers for their generous recommendations. The author would also like to thank Dr. Robin M. Boylorn and Dr. Cassidy D. Ellis for their editorial guidance and helpful feedback during the publication process.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.Notes1 LGBTQ+ is used to refer to all individuals who are marginalized because of their sexual and/or gender identities. When other terms are used, they are done so to honor their usage by individuals who are quoted or have specific job titles that utilize a different acronym. 2012 is highlighted here as it was the year Be True began and the start of hypermediated “coming outs” of active professional athletes, such as: Megan Rapinoe (2012), Brittney Griner (2013), Jason Collins (2013), and Michael Sam (2014).2 GLAAD, “Accelerating Acceptance 2023,” 2023, https://assets.glaad.org/m/23036571f611c54/original/Accelerating-Acceptance-2023.pdf; GLAAD, “Accelerating Acceptance 2018,” 2018, https://www.glaad.org/files/aa/Accelerating%20Acceptance%202018.pdf; Nadia Suleman, “Young Americans Are Increasingly ‘Uncomfortable’ With LGBTQ Community, GLAAD Study Shows,” Time, June 25, 2019, https://time.com/5613276/glaad-acceptance-index-lgbtq-survey/; GLAAD, “Accelerating Acceptance 2020,” 2020, https://www.glaad.org/sites/default/files/Accelerating%20Acceptance%202020.pdf; The Human Rights Project, “LGBTQ+ Americans under attack: A report and reflection on the 2023 state legislative session,” 2023, https://hrc-prod-requests.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/Anti-LGBTQ-Legislation-Impact-Report.pdf; Movement Advancement Project, “Bans on Transgender Youth Participation in Sports,” 2023, https://www.lgbtmap.org/equality-maps/sports_participation_bans.3 Throughout this article I deliberately use communities, rather than community, to signal the diversity of bodies and experiences navigated by LGBTQ+ individuals. Since its inception, Nike has styled the name of the product line in various ways, such as BETRUE, #BeTrue, BeTrue, and Be True. At the time of publication, Nike is using Be True in their written press releases. I use this formatting throughout, unless a quote dictates otherwise.4 Herman Gray, “Subject(ed) to Recognition,” American Quarterly 65, no. 4 (2013): 773; Kim Toffoletti and Holly Thorpe, “Female Athletes’ Self-Representation on Social Media: A Feminist Analysis of Neoliberal Marketing Strategies in “Economies of Visibility,” Feminism and Psychology 28, no. 1 (2018): 11–31.5 For example, Roopali Mukherjee and Sarah Banet-Weiser, introduction to Commodity Activism: Cultural Resistance in Neoliberal Times (New York: New York University Press, 2012), 1–17; Francesca Sobande, “Woke-washing: ‘Intersectional’ Femvertising and Branding ‘Woke’ Bravery,” European Journal of Marketing, 54, no. 11 (2019): 2723–45; Lisa A. Daily, “‘We Bleed for Female Empowerment’: Mediated Ethics, Commodity Feminism, and the Contradictions of Feminist Politics,” Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies 16, no. 2 (2019): 143;6 The company reported a net income of $5.7 billion in 2021.7 Celia Lury, Brands: The Logos of the Global Economy (London: Routledge, 2004).8 Philip Kotler and Nancy Lee, Corporate Social Responsibility: Doing the Most Good for Your Company and Your Cause (Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2005), 3.9 Geoffrey B. Sprinkle and Laureen A. Maines, “The Benefits and Costs of Corporate Social Responsibility,” Business Horizons, 53 (2010): 445–53; Minette E. Drumwright, “Advertising With A Social Dimension: The Role of Noneconomic Criteria,” Journal of Marketing, 60, no. 4 (1996): 71–87; Menno D. T. de Jong and Mark van der Meer, “How Does it Fit? Exploring the Congruence Between Organizations and Their Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Activities,” Journal of Business Ethics, 143 (2017): 71–83.10 Ronald Alsop, “Perils of Corporate Philanthropy: Touting Good Works Offends the Public, But Reticence is Perceived as Inaction.” The Wall Street Journal, January 16, 2002; Alina Dizik, “Education for Executives: Teaching the Golden Rules.” The Wall Street Journal, November 19, 2009.11 Sobande, “Woke-washing,” 2019.12 Rong Wang and Amy O’Connor, “Can Corporate-Nonprofit Partnerships Buffer Socially Irresponsible Corporations From Stakeholder Backlash?,” Corporate Communication: An International Journal, (2022).13 The 2021 campaign was the last one produced prior to the submission of this article.14 Simona Petracovschi and Jessica W. Chin, “Sports, Physical Practice, and the Female Body, 1980–1989: Women’s Emancipation in Romania Under Communism,” Critical Studies in Media Communication 36, no. 1 (2019): 35–57.15 Norman Fairclough, Critical Discourse Analysis: The Critical Study of Language (London: Longman, 1995), 132.16 Jennifer McClearen, “‘We are all Fighters’: The Transmedia Marketing of Difference in the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC),” International Journal of Communication 11, (2017): 3224–41; Jennifer McClearen, Fighting Visibility: Sports Media and Female Athletes in the UFC (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2021), 13.17 Nike News, “Inside Access: The Nike Dunk Celebrates 30 Years as an Icon,” April 17, 2015, https://news.nike.com/news/inside-access-the-iconic-nike-dunk-turns-30.18 C.L. Cole and Amy Hribar, “Celebrity Feminism: Nike Style Post-Fordism, Transcendence, and Consumer Power,” Sociology of Sport Journal 12 (1995): 347–69; Myra Macdonald, Representing Women: Myths of Femininity in Popular Media. (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 1995); C.L. Cole, “American Jordan: P.L.A.Y., Consensus, and Punishment,” Sociology of Sport Journal 13 (1996): 366–97; Michelle T. Helstein, “That’s Who I Want to be: The Politics and Production of Desire Within Nike Advertising to Women,” Journal of Sport & Social Issues 27, no. 3 (2003): 276–92; and Jennifer McClearen, “‘If You Let Me Play’: Girls’ Empowerment and Transgender Exclusion in Sports,” Feminist Media Studies 23 (2023): 1361–67.19 McClearen, Fighting Visibility, 19.20 Lisa Duggan, The Twilight of Equality? Neoliberalism, Cultural Politics, and the Attack on Democracy (Boston: Beacon Press, 2003); and Rohini S. Singh, “In the Company of Citizens: The Rhetorical Contours of Singapore’s Neoliberalism,” Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies 16, no. 3 (2019): 161–77.21 Nike News, “The 2015 Nike BETRUE Collection Celebrates the Potential of All Athletes,” June 3, 2015, https://news.nike.com/news/the-2015-nike-betrue-collection-celebrates-the-potential-of-all-athletes.22 Shari L. Dworkin and Michael A. Messner, “Just Do … what? Sport, Bodies, Gender,” in Gender and Sport: A Reader, ed. Shelia Scraton and Anne Flintoff (London: Routledge, 2002), 21.23 Nike News, “BETRUE 2017,” May 26, 2017. https://news.nike.com/news/betrue-2017.24 Bonnie Dow, “Ellen, Television, and the Politics of Gay and Lesbian Visibility,” Critical Studies in Media Communication 18, no. 2 (2001): 123–40.25 Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Epistemology of the Closet (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990); and C. Riley Snorton, Nobody is Supposed to Know: Black Sexuality on the Down Low (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2014).26 Kevin G. Barnhurst, “Visibility as Paradox: Representation and Simultaneous Contrast,” in Media/Queered: Visibility and Its Discontents, ed. Kevin G. Barnhurst (New York: Peter Lang, 2007), 1–20.27 Alfred Martin Jr. and Kathleen Battles, “The Straight Labor of Playing Gay,” Critical Studies in Media Communication 38, no. 2 (2021): 130.28 Evan Brody, “With the 249th Pick … Michael Sam and Imagining Failure Otherwise,” Journal of Sport and Social Issues 43, no. 4 (2019): 296–318.29 D. Travers Scott, “‘Coming Out of the Closet’ – Examining a Metaphor,” Annals of the International Communication Association 42, no. 3 (2018): 145–54.30 Sarah Banet-Weiser, “‘Confidence you can Carry!’: Girls in Crisis and the Market for Girls’ Empowerment Organizations,” Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies (2015): 183.31 Sarah Banet-Weiser, “‘Free Self-Esteem Tools?’: Brand Culture, Gender, and the Dove Real Beauty Campaign” in Commodity Activism: Cultural Resistance in Neoliberal Times, ed. Roopali Mukherjee and Sarah Banet-Weiser (New York: New York University Press, 2012), 40.32 F. Hollis Griffin, Feeling Normal: Sexuality and Media Criticism in the Digital Age (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2017).33 Courtney Szto, “Saving Lives With Soccer and Shoelaces: The Hyperreality of Nike (RED),” Sociology of Sport Journal 30 (2013): 41–56.34 Mukherjee and Banet-Weiser, Introduction; Akane Kanai and Rosalind Gill, “Woke? Affect, neoliberalism, marginalised identities and consumer culture” New Formations: A Journal of Culture/Theory/Politics, 102, (2020): 10–27.35 Nina Åkestam, Sara Rosengren, and Micael Dahlen, “Advertising “Like a Girl”: Toward a Better Understanding of ‘Femvertising’ and its Effects,” Psychology and Marketing, 34, no. 8 (2017): 795–806.36 Banet-Weiser, “‘Confidence you can Carry!”, 185.37 Sarah Banet-Weiser, Authentic™: The Politics of Ambivalence in a Brand Culture (New York: New York University Press, 2012); Daily, “We Bleed”, 143.38 Joel Penney, The Citizen Marketer: Promoting Political Opinion in the Social Media Age (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017).39 Commodity actualization produces resources that bolster both politics and economies of visibility.40 This also demonstrates how commodity actualization is part of the process through which economies of visibility are created and sustained since the focus is on the way in which individuals, through their purchasing choices, can rearticulate themselves as “authentic” subjects.41 Jeffrey Montez de Oca, Sherry Mason, and Sung Ahn, “Consuming for the Greater Good: ‘Woke’ Commercials in Sports Media,” Communication & Sport (2020): 1–23.42 Team INDIE, “Meet the LGBTQ+ Berliners Finding Strength in Sport,” INDIE Magazine, July 16, 2019, https://indie-mag.com/2019/07/nike-be-true/.43 The language of ownership is reflected in athlete coming out statements. For example, when asked to justify why he came out when he did, Michael Sam said “I wanted to own my truth.”44 C.L. Cole, “American Jordan: P.L.A.Y., Consensus, and Punishment,” Sociology of Sport Journal 13 (1996): 366–97; Lyndsay M. C. Hayhurst, and Courtney Szto, “Corporatizating Activism Through Sport-Focused Social Justice? Investigating Nike’s Corporate Responsibility Initiatives in Sport for Development and Peace,” Journal of Sport and Social Issues 40, no. 6 (2016): 522–44; Montez de Oca, Mason, and Ahn, “Consuming for the Greater Good”, 7.; and Szto, “Saving Lives,” 2013.45 Ana Swanson, “Nike and Coca-Cola Lobby Against Xinjiang Forced Labor Bill.” New York Times, January 20, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/29/business/economy/nike-coca-cola-xinjiang-forced-labor-bill.html.46 While Nike has made strides to provide better working conditions in its overseas factories after reports in the 1990s identified unsafe and abusive working conditions, there are still problematic wage discrepancies in its business model as evidenced by Nike’s $6 billion annual expenditures on athlete endorsements and sponsorships compared to the €82–200 per month they pay the workers who make these items, of whom over 80% are women in Indonesia.47 Samantha King, “An All-Consuming Cause: Breast Cancer, Corporate Philanthropy, and the Market for Generosity,” Social Text, 19, No. 4 (2001): 115–43.48 Archie B. Carroll and Kareem M. Shabana, “The Business Case for Corporate Social Responsibility: A Review of Concepts, Research and Practice,” International Journal of Management Reviews, 12, no. 1 (2010): 85–105.49 Nike, “Pride Community Grants,” 2021, https://purpose.nike.com/pride-community-grants.50 In 2018 alone, 78% of political contributions from Nike’s PAC went to Republicans just a year after the Republican-controlled House, Senate, and White House rolled back protections for LGBTQ+ individuals, which had a disproportionately negative affect on transgender individuals. Nihal Krishan, “Despite Recent ‘Progressive’ Ads with Colin Kaepernick, Nike Gives More Money to Republicans Than Democrats,” Open Secrets, September 12, 2018, https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2018/09/colin-kaepernick-nike-gives/; OpenSecrets “Nike Inc.,” 2021, https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/nike-inc/recipients?candscycle=2020&id=D000027998&toprecipscycle=2018.51 iSpot.TV., “Nike TV Commercial, ‘Unlimited Courage’ Featuring Chris Mosier,” https://www.ispot.tv/ad/ARNT/nike-unlimited-courage-featuring-chris-mosier.52 Nike, “Unlimited Courage” [Television commercial], Vimeo (2016), https://vimeo.com/177952174.53 Brody, Evan, D. Travers Scott, and Katrina L. Pariera. “LGBTQ+ Collegiate Athletes and the Double Bind: Insights From the Experiences of Out Varsity Athletes.” International Journal of Communication 16 (2022): 21.54 John D’Emilio, Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities: The Making of a Homosexual Minority in the United States, 1940–1970 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983), 1.55 Gray, “Subject(ed),” 772.56 Gray, “Subject(ed),” 2013.57 Julia Himberg, The New Gay for Pay: The Sexual Politics of American Television Production (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2017), 4; Mia Fischer et al., “A Conversation: Queer Digital Media Resources and Research,” First Monday 23, no. 7 (2018), https://doi.org/10.5210/fm.v23i7.9255. Emphasis in original.58 Fischer, Terrorizing Gender, 4.59 Mia Fischer, “Piss(ed): The Biopolitics of the Bathroom,” Communication, Culture & Critique, 12, no. 3 (2019): 397–415; Owen, D.W. Hargie, David H. Mitchell, and Ian J.A. Somerville, “‘People Have a Knack of Making You Feel Excluded if They Catch on to Your Difference’: Transgender Experiences of Exclusion in Sport,” International Review for the Sociology of Sport 52, no. 2 (2019): 223–39; Shannon S.C. Herrick and Lindsay R. Duncan, “A Qualitative Exploration of LGBTQ+ and Intersecting Identities Within Physical Activity Contexts,” Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology 40 (2018): 325–35; and Ellen D.B. Riggle, “Experiences of a Gender Non-Conforming Lesbian in the ‘Ladies’ (Rest) Room,” Journal of Lesbian Studies 22, no. 4, (2018): 482–95, among others.60 Human Rights Campaign, “Understanding the Transgender Community” (n.d.), https://www.hrc.org/resources/understanding-the-transgender-community.61 This also minimizes the “double burden” that accompanies individuals such as Mosier who must not only fight discrimination as the first in their respective industry but are then expected to be a national spokesperson tasked with representing an entire community. Thomas, Gazing, 2020.62 Katherine L. Lavelle, “‘Plays Like a Guy’: A Rhetorical Analysis of Brittney Griner in Sports Media,” Journal of Sports Media 9, no. 2, (2014): 115–31.63 John M. Sloop, “‘This is Not Natural’: Caster Semenya’s Gender Threats,” Critical Studies in Media Communication 29, no. 2 (2012): 81–96.64 Mia Fischer and Jennifer McClearen, “Transgender Athletes and the Queer Art of Athletic Failure,” Communication and Sport 8, no. 2 (2020): 154.65 Moya Bailey, “Misogynoir in Medical Media: On Caster Semenya and R. Kelly,” Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience 2, no. 2 (2016): 1–31; and Sarah J. Blithe and Jenna N. Hanchey, “The Discursive Emergence of Gendered Physiological Discrimination in Sex Verification Testing,” Women’s Studies in Communication 38, no. 4 (2015): 486–506.66 Nike, “Nobody Wins Alone” [Television commercial], YouTube, (2019), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ck76-4lAgV4.67 The ruling only applied to “middle distance” events so Semenya, and others, were considered female-enough to run shorter or longer distances, such as the 100-, 200-, and 3000-meter races, but not the specific races for which they had trained and competed in previously.68 One of Semenya’s former competitors, Madeleine Pape, has reflected on her path as one of those “quick to join the chorus of voices around me that were beginning to accuse Semenya of having an unfair advantage” to now seeing Semenya as “a good thing for women’s sport.” She further discusses how Semenya’s sexual identity and non-traditional gender expression played into long-standing biases about femininity and heterosexuality in Track & Field and states that “it is very fair to be asking why women of color from the global south and from sub-Saharan Africa, in particular, are overrepresented amongst the women who’ve been accused of having an unfair advantage.” Lulu Garcia-Navarro, “Olympic Runner who Once Competed Against Caster Semenya Weights in on Testosterone Ruling,” May 5, 2019, National Public Radio. https://www.npr.org/2019/05/05/720376207/olympic-runner-who-once-competed-against-caster-semenya-weighs-in-on-testosteron.69 National Public Radio, “Wave of Bills to Block Trans Athletes Has no Basis in Science, Researcher Says,” NPR, March 18, 2021, https://www.npr.org/2021/03/18/978716732/wave-of-new-bills-say-trans-athletes-have-an-unfair-edge-what-does-the-science-s.70 Wyatt Ronan, “2021 Officially Becomes Worst Year in Recent History for LGBTQ State Legislative Attacks as Unprecedented Number of States Enact Record-Shattering Number of Anti-LGBTQ Measures Into Law,” Human Rights Campaign, May 7, 2021, https://www.hrc.org/press-releases/2021-officially-becomes-worst-year-in-recent-history-for-lgbtq-state-legislative-attacks-as-unprecedented-number-of-states-enact-record-shattering-number-of-anti-lgbtq-measures-into-law; Cullen Peele, “Roundup of Anti-LGBTQ+ Legislation Advancing in States Across the Country,” Human Rights Campaign, May 23, 2023, https://www.hrc.org/press-releases/roundup-of-anti-lgbtq-legislation-advancing-in-states-across-the-country; Movement Advancement Project, “Bans on Transgender Youth.”71 Gray, Subject(ed), 774. Emphasis in original.72 Human Rights Watch, “‘They’re Chasing us Away From Sport’: Human Rights Violations in Sex Testing of Elite Women Athletes,” December 4, 2020, https://www.hrw.org/report/2020/12/04/theyre-chasing-us-away-sport/human-rights-violations-sex-testing-elite-women.73 Nike, “This is Our Time” [Television commercial], YouTube, (2020), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2rC_iOLfcY.74 Nike, “Radical Inclusivity” [Television commercial], (2021).75 Nike News, “The 2021 Be True Collection Brings the Energy, One Story (And Patch) at a Time,” June 4, 2021, https://news.nike.com/news/nike-be-true-collection-2021-official-images-release-date.76 Ibid.77 Ibid.78 Courtney M. Cox, “Haram Hoops? FIBA, Nike, and the Hijab’s Half-Court Defense” in Communication and Sport, ed. Michael Butterworth (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2021): 199–215.79 Ronan, 2021 Officially Becomes, 2021.80 Mary L. Gray, Out in the Country: Youth, Media, and Queer Visibility in Rural America (New York: New York University Press, 2009).