I am a girl. I kick ass like a girl. I run like a girl. I am sassy like no boy could ever be. I am me. I am a girl. I run, sweat profusely, and would challenge any boy, even if they are stronger, fiercer, and could truly kick my butt. That does not stop me from stepping up to the starting line and saying: prove it.
“Always” feminine products have a new ad campaign. For those of you that are frequent readers of my blog, you will know I am not a fan of traditional advertising, where soap companies try to use feminism to leverage our purchasing power for their products. I am not a fan. I happen to be a purchaser of Always products (apologies if that is TMI), but I do not purchase them because of their ad campaigns. I purchase because they are the right products for what I want to use. They are lucky for my support.
Yesterday, I came across their new ad campaign, “Like a Girl” with the tagline: “Rewrite the Rules.” You will want to watch for yourself, but before you do, I will tell you I started getting all irritated in the beginning because I think someone needs to be more passionate about what it means to be a girl. Eventually near the end you see some quasi passion, but I think they could have done better to cast young girls with real passion for what it means to be a girl.
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Here is hoping you teach your daughters to be loud, bold, and passionate about their girlhood. Hear them roar. See them being proud of who they are as girls/women. My hope is that they are sassy. That they swing their arms, run fast, and kick butt.
random olio 
so i understand your point but let’s face facts, marketing is for the mean, not the deviation. and the mean (or the average) is swayed by both what they believe society will accept, what unsocial behaviors they can get away with,and by a belief that they could be the deviation if they chose to be it – but that’s the rub – they never choose to be it. that is why these stories of the sleepy kid in the sleepy town is placed in uncontrollable circumstances (face facts, if he was sleepy, then he will never seek these circumstances) and the kid saves the world. this story goes back to early history yet it still draw the mean in droves because everyone will walk out identifying with the sleepy kid. I am having an On The Waterfront moment with “I could’ve been a contender.”
but what underscores my point is the fact that marketing works…meaning that most people identify with their cola or their car or their [insert brand here]. Marketing makes the mean identify with an aspiration or a capacity. it makes them buy an option that they’ll never use or an engine they’ll never need or a stereo system that is never optimized to the room (a personal rub for me because anything beyond a bose sound system requires the user to unclutter a room because clutter bounces sound wave in all different ways that will cause dead zones where the sound will be cancelled out by another sound wave). Look at the guy who buys the 200 MPH car and can never take it our of 2nd gear and never puts track time on it because it may void the warranty. and there is such a focus on differentiation that even simple things like razors or maxipads have to have either glide strips or wings.
Do you know how much s**t I got when I bought a minivan because what it represents? “I could never drive a minivan,” is what I heard. Soon I retorted with “yeah you can, you have a drivers license, right? Because you have a car here and if you don’t have license, you’ll get arrested” and then I got the tap dance of very interesting excuses. I would have preferred to hear that “my doctor says I am allergic to minivans.” At least that would have had some originality. With boys that are 10 and 6 and me with an itch to start hitting the road on vacations (Simon & Garfunkel’s America starts to pipe in), the minivan rocks. Add the fact that I pulled all the seats out save 2 and hauled 50 cu-ft of mulch last weekend. Add the fact that we took my mother and her partner Terry with us to Williamsburg – a trip that Terry has wanted to do her whole life! When I bought a minivan, I bought utility. But I will admit, given that my wife is about 5’2” I splurged on the model with self-closing doors. I am such a poser.
I love hearing people who vehemently swear that Tylenol works better than generic Acetaminophen as if McNeil put in an extra oxygen into the molecule that has a life altering benefit. it’s the brand they are buying, not the molecule. now all things being equal (meaning price), i will by Tylenol simply because i believe they have more to lose should there be an issue with their product. this helps when issues arise. But the fact that they’ll argue this is insane. They are not a scientist let along having ever taken an organic chemistry class. Why do they think this?
I personally believe that this is a symptom of technology and how the internet is fostering of a culture of anti-experts where skill is “democratized” where any idiot with a camera believes that they can be Ansel Adams because their auto shoot is set to black and white where they don’t need to understand the science Mr. Adams knew because film was expensive – developing was expensive and he could not afford to take pictures in auto-mode. Where opinion is fact and research is dismissed and credentials are scoffed.
In this vein, I have noticed a trend in modern marketing campaigns where men are portrayed as doofuses, idiots and curmudgeons. As if a passive aggressive movement has initiated an indirect war on men. it pisses me off because I am the kind of guy that runs in and not out. I have been a first responder on many occasions whether it be fires or triages or defense or bullying or saying something when someone cuts in line. Yet people will dismiss this or try to say that anyone could have done what I did yet I was typically only one of very small group that was running in. where were all these other people who can do this? it’s because they chose not to run in. in the ephemeral works of Lloyd in Say Anything “I got a question, if you guys know so much about women how come you’re here at like a Gas & Sip on a Saturday night, completely alone, drinking beers, no women anywhere?” “By choice man” not because they were undesirable!
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