Analysis Of Like A Girl Commercial

Always generated a commercial named “Like a girl” in order to focus on the insult “like a girl” and how it has been effectively decreasing the confidence of females. Always decided to take the phrase and analyze the effects it has on multiple people by asking them to perform certain actions “like a girl”. The message of this commercial is to show that people of the female gender that they are not the connotation of these words and that they need to turn the stigma around and coin this phrase as something positive rather than negative. Always actively shows that the phrase “like a girl” is an insult to females and it is more detrimental to a female’s self-confidence than it seems and that her self-respect can decrease as she goes

Rather than using only females, the director of the advertisement uses a small boy and a post-pubescent male to portray the message of the phrase being universally understood. The small boy, when asked to run like a girl, runs sloppily with his hands waving frantically next to him. His demonstration of this insult displays that his understanding of “like a girl” encompasses not being able to complete a task at maximum potential. The post-pubescent male, when asked to perform the same task, runs very slowly while being conscious of his hair being messed up. His response to this was similar to the little boy’s in that he didn’t complete the task how a normal person would run. In this aspect, both of the males treated this phrase the same regardless of the age; as an insult to the female gender. This insult that is shaped by society demonstrates that the female is the weaker gender therefore portraying sexism in that women are the ones who are able not to do things

In the same way, the females in the commercial were asked to perform the same task as the boys, to run like a girl. The post-pubescent females ran similarly to the males in that they ran very lazily and with their hands flailing in the air, while the pre-pubescent girls ran fast and with confidence. Always then raises the question of when the phrase “like a girl” became an insult and brings up how the self- confidence of younger girls and older girls are different. A girl who has not gone through puberty is likely to be seen differently by society than a girl who has already gone experienced it. Society has sexualized females who have already gone through puberty because of how her body looks as a result of it. This causes a female to keep up with social standards in the way of appearance. Instead of aiming to pleasing just herself, she now has to appease the audience of the opposite sex and go along with the norms of society. After puberty, females are typically more aware of how they look and how they dress as a result of social media throwing images of photoshopped models onto magazines and advertisements thus causing them to lose their self-confidence. Younger girls are not impacted by society as much as the other girls are, so their self-confidence has not yet been damaged, which is why Always makes a point to say