"Like A Girl"

      I want to talk about the ALWAYS commercial that aired during the Super Bowl, it was quite different in the sense that it got you to think. The ad opens with the question, “what does it mean to do something like a girl?’’. After that, the director asks a few people to “run like a girl”. To no ones surprise, they all flail their arms and legs around, acting as if it’s a hard task to do. She then asks, “show me what it looks like to fight like a girl” and “throw like a girl”, with again the same response.

      What surprised me the most was when she asked young girls between the age of six and fourteen the same questions; their responses were quite opposite. When she asked, “what does it mean to run like a girl, fight like a girl, throw like a girl”, they ran and fought their best.  One little girl even responded to “what does it mean to run like a girl” with “it means to run as fast as you can”. This is where the point of the commercial was introduced: “when did doing something ‘like a girl’ become an insult”? I had never thought about that, had you?

      The director asked a little girl, “Is ‘like a girl’ a good thing”? She ponders the question, and responds, “I don’t know if it’s a good thing or bad thing”. She goes on  to say “it sounds like a bad thing. It sounds like you’re trying to humiliate someone”. That’s when I realized it was just like another commercial I’ve seen before, the “That’s so gay” commercial. In a quick summary, it tries to show you how saying the phrase “that’s so gay” is very offensive and shouldn’t be used, just as their “like a girl” commercial. I’ve always been an advocate of never saying “that’s so gay” and that’s why this ALWAYS commercial is so moving to me. It had never occurred to me that saying “like a girl” is offensive since that’s something I’ve grown up hearing and thinking. I would like us to put a stop to it!

       Words scrolled across the screen, “A girl’s confidence plummets during puberty.” At that point in their life girls need all the confidence boosters they can get, they don’t need to be told they do something “like a girl”, as if it’s a bad thing. Towards the end of the commercial, a girl approximately 25 years old gave a motivational speech about doing things “like a girl”. She said, “Keep doing it…if you’re still scoring…still being first, it doesn’t matter what they say. Yes I kick like a girl, swim like a girl and I wake up in the morning like a girl because I am a girl, and that’s not something I should be ashamed of.” Then at the end, all the women who had flailed their arms and legs around when asked to “run like a girl” had another chance to run like themselves.

      I got very interested in this campaign and saw that ALWAYS had made more than one of these “like a girl” commercials. They took a few of the people from the Super Bowl commercial and elaborated on them like a 14-year-old girl named Zoe and a 9-year-old boy named Linden. So I watch the one about Zoe a girl who is a very good golfer! She told a story about this time she won a competition and how she was excited like any golfer would be! But then she questioned her win as she went to school the next day when everyone told her opponent that was a boy, “I can’t believe she beat you”. She started to feel like her win wasn’t enough. Why is it now that girls can’t feel victorious like boys? I think it’s answered in the next commercial ALWAYS made with Linden. With Linden they were showing how young boys think that “throwing like a girl insinuates you’re bad…. and throwing like a boy is not an insult”. It’s clear to see that when we’re young we’re taught that girls are inferior and it usually sticks with us the rest of our lives.

      One girl who proves that the stereotype didn’t stick with her is Karlie Harman. She’s in another ALWAYS commercial. She’s the quarterback on her football team and doesn’t make the phrase “like a girl” stop her. People on her team have said she “throws like a girl” but she takes that as a complement because she “throws with power and dedication”. She is an inspiration to never let peoples’ words bring you down or make you want to give up. No matter what, boys and girls alike, we should always strive to be the best we can be, whether we do it “like a girl” or “like a boy” we should make sure we just do it “like ourselves”.