Sketchers New 'Daddy'$ Money' Sneakers Are So Damn Creepy

There are just so many problems with this, so it’s impossible to know where to start. And where to stop, because AHHH! It looks like a SNL spoof, but these shoes with hidden two-inch lifts are legitimately produced and sold. And the ad — obviously aimed at preteen and teen girls — is so creepy-sexual and ridiculous. Why did they stop short of showing a tween girl giving a 70-year-old man a lap dance? Or was that cut for artistic integrity?

And as a piece on Babble points out:

It Panders In the Worst Way.

Between the white chick in the Daisy Dukes, the sneaker called “Gimme Mucho Dinero,” and the African-American girl with the gold knuckle duster ring, I just can’t even.

Ugh.

And what’s with the hidden two-inch lifts inside these $80 neon pleather sneakers? What does that have to do with spending daddy’$ money?

Is the message “Here, 12-year-old, manipulate cash from a man so you can buy some ugly-ass shoes that make you look taller and skinnier and well, different, than you are.”? Consume and become a product of consumption, child!

Or maybe it’s just a dying brand desperately trying to reinvent themselves as cool, and the only way they know how is by creepily marketing shiny pleather high-tops with lifts to tweens? Perhaps I should just start filling hot dogs with jack cheese and then folding them in pizzas and selling those on street corners? Cheesy Blasters Consumerism!

[via Babble]