Nine West Ads denigrate 40 years of Feminism?

If you are old enough to remember the DoubleMint Gum ads (Double your pleasure, Double your fun), with saccharine twins smiling through the cloying jingle, then you remember the invention of negative advertising. The idea was to be so annoying that people made fun of you. As a result, your product became a household name. So, in this case, when you bought gum, DoubleMint was a familiar, therefore trustworthy brand.

In a new spin on this, Nine West has a new series of ads that has all the media a-buzz and mostly fuming. The most offensive of these ads are, undoubtedly "The Walk Of Shame" and the "Starter Husband Hunt" ads, which portray modern young women as either sleeping around or looking for the first victim. Believing that such thought went out with the movie "The Women," the 1939 Classic based on the writing of Clair Booth Luce and Anita Loos, I was -- in a word -- furious!

Of course these ads exist to garner attention, and so far it is working...the attention that is. However, most of my 60+ friends and I make a habit of not buying from people who insult us. These two ads, in my opinion, are in terribly bad taste and poke fun at the younger generation of women struggling to find meaningful work and love in a generation that appears all but devoid of the romance and traditional manners of their parents. Young Millennial women have enough to deal with without these shoes and their negative signifiers. Here in my neck of the woods -- East Side Manhattan -- the nearest Nine West Store is across the street from the far less trendy, traditional, yet chic Aerosoles -- shoes in which a New Yorker can actually walk. Next time I need a shoe fix, I will walk right past Nine West and I will go into Aerosoles. So there Nine West! PuhLeeze!

Images copywrite Nine West, ninewest.com

xo -Mary