Boycott Toxic Snowboards!

The Burton Snowboard Company in Vermont, an international leader in the sport industry, recently unveiled its “Promo” line of snowboards, featuring graphic images of self-mutilation. NAMI is protesting the company’s insensitivity to public health concerns.

For people living with mental illnesses, self-injury unfortunately sometimes is a means of coping with severe emotional stress. Physical injury becomes a surrogate for emotional pain. The Burton images reinforce impulses toward such violence and essentially trivializes them.

Spectrum Youth & Family Services in Vermont , which provides housing and services to homeless, foster and at-risk youth, has protested the toxic snowboards by suspending its participation in Burton’s “Chill” program— which provides free snowboarding lessons to disadvantaged youth in cities around the country. Chill’s mission? “To build self-esteem.”

In a newspaper article , Spectrum’s executive director objected also to a Burton snowboard line that features Playboy models, which is being protested by other groups: “I think I have the right to get on a [chairlift] this winter with my 5-year-old and not have him subjected to any of these scenes…I think I have the right not to have my son ask me, ‘Daddy, why is there a picture of someone’s naked bottom on that snowboard? Why is there a picture of a bloody hand all over that snowboard?’”

Please send Burton a message:


  • Primo snowboards are a public health hazard

  • Self-injury is not a sport. There is nothing athletic about self-mutilation.
    [*]
    Graphic illustrations of bleeding fingers are insensitive and trivialize a symptom of mental illness.
    [*]
    Be one of the good guys. Stop toxic marketing. Support mental health education instead.
Mr. Laurent Potdevin, CEO
Burton Snowboard Company
80 Industrial Parkway
Burlington, VT 05401
info@burton.com.

StigmaBusters involved in youth-oriented programs are especially encouraged to contact Burton’s Chill Program to emphasize that the Primo line is a black-eye to the good the company tries to do. They are at risk of losing goodwill and credibility.

Katherine McConnell

Burton Snowboard Company
Director of Chill Program
katherinem@burton.com
(802) 652-3570

Comments

I dunno, I agree that it's in bad taste but I'm a bit weary of the parents who try to raise their kids in a world that is nothing but gumdrops and lollipops.

It's getting the point where you can't do or say anything without someone crying about what their child is going to think. When I was raised, if I asked a question, I got an answer. That's called reality.

Back to the topic though, that is a pretty stupid idea to promote self-mutiliation on snow-boards. What kind of wine were they drinking when that popped up in their heads as a good idea?
 
Who cares, the media is covered with skinny bitches. Send a letter to them saying they are damaging children's self esteem. I don't have a problem with something as stupid as snowboards. If they are going to be offended by it.. that's their problem. There are much more serious things to write letters about.

Long live a good brand of snowboard.
 
Complete and utter bullshit. You don't want your kid, "subjected," to such things then tie a blindfold around your kid's head. The world is not, and should not, be designed to accommodate children in every situation. Kids need to live in this world and sometimes being exposed to alternative ideas does the most to educate them. Nobody covered my eyes going down 42nd street as a kid seeing peep shows and hookers and junkies (oh my!).

I wish that American parents had the slightest idea what kids grow-up with every day in other less fortunate countries. These kids deal with abuse, murder, discrimination, yet they usually manage to live and survive. The world is not a pretty place and we harm our children by telling them that it is and always will be.

Diversity of opinion, thought, and value gives us strength.

Vermont is absolutely fucking lucky to have Burton headquartered there and most of Vermont is very aware of this.
 
Gotama had his parents try to raise him in an atmosphere of tranquility.

He was emotionally soft. He saw a dead man and his viewpoints changed, and realized the world was about suffering.

You know him better as Buddah.

Bad taste is far more interesting than The Care Bears.
 

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