Making Girls Proud To Be Who They Are

The #LikeAGirl commercial from the Superbowl has gotten mixed reactions, but for me it had the most impact. The commercial made girls feel like it was okay to do things like a girl. As a young girl I always heard boys tell other boys "You throw like a girl" or "You run like a girl". The implication was that they were throwing poorly or running badly. In this commercial it showed young girls being asked to run, throw, and fight like a girl and the results were incredible. They threw like they were the star pitcher on a softball team. They sprinted like they were in the Olympics.

The effect of this commercial spread all of twitter with the trending #LikeAGirl. One of my favorite tweets was this one:

The caption "I serve my country #likeagirl" proves that women can be proud of who they are. The hashtag is there to show young women that they can do anything they want to and do it just as well as a boy. 

However, some people didn't have the same reaction I did. Meninists started using the #LikeABoy in response saying that equality matters. The difference is that no one has ever used "like a boy" as an insult, but "like a girl" is used very often as an insult. This commercial wasn't made to bring down the self esteem of boys and I think these meninists need to understand that. It is also a proven fact that women aren't on the same playing field as men; not just in things like throwing or running, but in the workforce. In 2013, among full-time, year-round workers, women were paid 78 percent of what men were paid. Hopefully this commercial won't just change what is happening among young girls and boys but what happens among adults.