Do you throw like a girl? Sanitary towel company Always wants us to think carefully before we answer that. Research has revealed that girls tend to become less confident and more self-conscious about their bodies once they start menstruating, and Always has created a video which demonstrates why we need to see that girls are just as strong and powerful as their male counterparts.
We see adult men and women, as well as a young boy, running, fighting and moving ‘like a girl’ – think faux bitch slapping, pouting, and displays of poor upper body strength – and then, some pre-teen girls show us what it really means. To run like a girl just means to run.
Before you all join in a chorus of ‘Well, duh’, consider what the word ‘girly’ means to you and the people around you. More often than not, it’s a pejorative. Anything pertaining to girlhood is seen as being a bit weak and silly.
Madonna once told us ‘It’s OK to be a boy, but for a boy to look like a girl is degrading.’ Less popular with the Instagram crowd but equally damning is the Rogers and Hammerstein classic I Enjoy Being A Girl.
‘I flip when a fellow sends me flowers
I drool over dresses made of lace
I talk on the telephone for hours
with a pound and a half of cream upon my face.’
There’s nothing wrong with flowers, but it’s not the sort of sentiment that screams ‘Take me seriously!’ To be a girl is to be trivial, and a little bit mentally unbalanced when thinking of men and dresses. Our attitudes might have changed since the 1950s, but we’re all sometimes guilty of dismissing anything we deem to be a bit girly.
How often have you tried to toughen up florals by accessorising with leather, or balked at the idea of being caught reading a book with a sparkly cover, or gone out of your way to avoid the pink option when you’re buying a new toothbrush? We’ve confused and conflated feminism with scorning the feminine.
Nasty Gal founder and author of #GIRLBOSS Sophie Amoruso told the New York Times: ‘I don’t like it when an old man says, [creepy voice] “Let’s invite the girls to dinner” but I think it’s OK to call girls girls.’
Even though it’s sometimes used to convey a weakness, it’s a strong word. We need to be honest that in the wrong hands, it can be used as an insidious weapon. ‘Girls’ is used behind closed doors by the sort of people who refer to women as ‘females’ to their faces, through gritted teeth. Strip clubs offer punters ‘Girls! Girls! Girls!’ not ‘Women! Women! Women!’ It’s long been associated with sexual and emotional immaturity, and by extension, powerlessness.
But by blaming the word, we’ve created another problem for ourselves. We’ve all, at some point described ourselves as girls, and maybe we still identify as such. Demonising the term hurts girls everywhere, past and present. At best, it trivialises everything we thought we were supposed to love. At worst, it diminishes our very core. It’s just about OK to be a girl, as long as you don’t throw like one.
We don’t need to stop saying or being ‘girls’ but we do need to look closely at the Always video and challenge anyone and anything that suggests to be like a girl is to be weaker and lesser.
Plan UK’s current campaign, Because I Am A Girl, is chilling proof that being a girl can make you incredibly vulnerable, but it doesn’t make you any less tough. Violence against women and girls is the most widespread form of abuse worldwide. So often, girls are forced to be strong in horrific circumstances. We simply can’t say that being a girl makes you weak.
Obviously, being a girl means being commercially exploited and being offered a range of gimmicky laptops, cars and biros dedicated to our flipping, drooling selves. But if you want to be a girl, and drink a pink drink and write with a pink pen, you’re no less cool or strong than a self-describing woman who drinks Tennent’s Super and drives a tank to work.
Don’t fight the idea that girls are strong – because when a girl fights, she fights to win.
** Follow Daisy on Twitter @NotRollerGirl**
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.