Skechers letter-writing campaign

Send a letter to Skechers about their Chrstina Aguilera "nurse" ad!

This letter will be sent to Robert Greenberg, Chairman and CEO; Michael Greenberg, President and Director; Marvin Bernstein, VP, International Sales; George Zelinsky, President, Retail and Jason Greenberg, VP, Visual Imaging. Scott Greenberg, VP, Visual Merchandising is no longer receiving emails since he has changed his email address apparently in response to the 400 letters he received in the first 4 days of this campaign.


Subject:*
A copy of our executive director's letter is below--feel free to use it. However, an original letter from you is more powerful. If you have a moment for even one original sentence, please delete the form letter and write one of your own. If you do write one of your own PLEASE DRAFT IT IN YOUR WORD PROCESSOR and then paste it into the window below. A rare glitch with our web site has twice deleted letters that were drafted on this page--so it is safer to draft it elsewhere and save a copy. Also, if you draft in a word processor, you will be able to spell check it-- something that our web page cannot do. Thank you very much.
Message:*	I am writing to urge you to end Skechers' use of the Christina Aguilera advertisement featuring her as a sadistic "nurse," and to refrain from the use of nurses in your future advertisements. This ad's depiction of a "nurse" that simultaneously exploits the "naughty nurse" and the battleaxe/Nurse Ratched stereotypes, setting the nurse up both as an available sex object and a mock-malevolent authority figure, rather than a competent professional, is damaging to the nursing profession. I realize this commercial is intended as a fantasy, but nursing is not just any profession, but one which is struggling to overcome decades of harmful misconceptions. Perhaps you are not aware that we are in the midst of a global nursing shortage of previously unseen proportions that is only expected to worsen over the next two decades. The nursing shortage is one of our most urgent public health crises. Depicting North America's 3 million registered nurses as female sex objects suggests that nursing work consists primarily of satisfying the sexual needs of physicians and/or patients. Such images discourage men and self-respecting, talented women from entering the profession. This adds to the chronic underfunding of nursing research, education and clinical practice since it is seen as a profession which is all about sexual servitude/pleasure/pain instead of education and hard work. Nursing is a distinct science and an autonomous profession. Registered nurses receive 2-10 years of college-level training, and studies have shown that patients' lives depend directly on the availability and qualifications of the nurses who care for them. For instance, one recent study of nurse short-staffing--a primary cause and effect of the shortage--found that when the patient load of a nurse is doubled from 4 to 8, post-operative mortality increases by 31%. In essence, nurses save and improve lives every day. As patients, the less nursing care we have, the more likely we are to die. The nursing shortage affects us all. Many who display negative images of nurses doubt that such images can really harm the nursing profession. However, as public health professionals at USC's Hollywood, Health and Society project and elsewhere can tell you, entertainment media do affect how people think and act with regard to health issues. A 2000 JWT Communications study found that US youngsters in grades 2-10 got their most striking impression of nursing from the fictional television show "ER," and consistent with that show's physician-centric messages, the youngsters found nursing to be a technical field "like shop," a job reserved for "girls" and one too lowly for private school students. Nursing is none of these things. A Kaiser Family Foundation study found that "ER"'s message is so influential that one-third of their viewers use information from the show to make health care decisions. A key reason that nursing is in its current state--understaffed, underfunded and underempowered--is that the work of nurses is undervalued by the general public and health care decision makers, all of whom are consumers of media and advertising. In addition to removing the Skechers nurse advertisement, I also encourage you to make amends to the nursing profession by supporting efforts to improve public understanding of the profession in a tangible way. The Center for Nursing Advocacy, which engages in such efforts, would be happy to assist you. We are confident that organizations such as Nurses for a Healthier Tomorrow would also be happy to work with you. Please be part of the solution to the nursing shortage and the improvement of public health. Help us improve public understanding of nursing at this critical time.
Please put your name and contact information only in the boxes below and not in the body of the letter above. Your contact information and your email address will precede the message. Thank you. We do not share your name or contact information with anyone or any organization. We keep it private.

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