Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Shoes* (*But Were Afraid to Ask)

Apr 15, 2011, 11:53 AM EDT

In which a new company asks the controversial question: does an athletic shoe’s life begin at conception, or birth? Introducing the Gravity Defyer, whose logo, I would argue, is already more identifiable than the Nike swoosh. It’s sperm, after all. And that’s been around forever. And according to the company, a sperm logo is exactly what they were going for. From Business Insider:

So is the logo just something that looks spermish? No. According to the company, the logo is exactly what it appears to be. “Our logo is deliberate. Our customers feel like they are getting the beginning of a new life when they try our shoes,” said Alexander Elnekaveh, CEO of Gravity Defyer. “We are not embarrassed by it.”

But here’s another way to look at it, and a big reason I would not have gone in this direction. Millions of sperm are produced during the sex act, of which only thousands will reach the fallopian tubes, tens will encounter the oocyte and only one will reach the final destination, causing pregnancy. In basketball terms, that’s a very poor shooting percentage.