Walk of Shame Ad: Offensive?
Tis the season for advertising.
We’ve all seen those tv spots that have little to do with the product and more to do with people. Well, designer Harvey Nichols has taken this type of advertising in a somewhat different direction. Harvey Nichol’s 2011 Christmas ad spotlights a series of young women making the early morning trek from where ever they’ve spent the night to their home, more commonly known as the “walk of shame.”
The ad seems to try and take a somewhat playful angle on something that has happened to almost every girl, but not everyone finds this exactly humorous. Some seem to be torn on what can be taken from the ad. A fashion commentator for the Guardian asks is the ad making the claim “if you’re a size 14 and wear [spandex] and travel by [subway] then staying out partying is common and vulgar, but so long as you are skinny and expensively dressed [...] it’s quite chic?” Still others take something else away. Lilit Marcus, a writer for Racket, says that the final message of the ad is to “own your awesomeness and turn the walk of shame into a ‘stride of pride’.”
So, is this ad funny, offensive or something completely different, even empowering?
