Women in pop culture have been put into a box. They have been shown that the most important thing about a woman is nothing is their beauty and their body. More importantly it is the way you look to a man that is the most important. The media tells us were supposed to inferior to men, our job is to look pretty, cook, and clean. Women don't belong in the workplace, shouldn't hold positions of authority, and also shouldn't even think about sports or participate in them because those are all boy things. Girls play with dolls and the boys play sports. There are two popular shows about young football players "We Are: The Brooklyn Saints" and "Liberty City". A young girl looking to watch a show about girls her age has limited options, but the most popular being "Toddlers and Tiaras" where girls get judged based upon their beauty with a face full of makeup.
Media has given women in sports a terrible name. The quote from one of my favorite movies Sandlot is "You Play Ball Like A Girl!" Like a girl? What does that mean? It means again, like everything else portrayed in media women are inferior to men. "A League of Their Own" was one of the first inspiring and empowering female sports movies. Debuting in 1992 it is still the gold standard not just of female-centric movies. A league of their own is the men are called off to war, and the women get to play. The movie is based on a true story and brings light to woman fighting to amount to more than being a pretty house wife. Even in the movie it demonstrates the struggles women faced represents how "sex sales" and the women are playing for the pleasure of men and given skirts to play in, instead of the traditional baseball pants the men wear.
A Superbowl ad by Always created the #LikeAGirl campaign and it shows girls and boys of various ages being prompted questions such as "run like a girl" or "throw like a girl" the older ones and young boys had an un-athletic and un-coordinated demonstration, but when the question was asked to young girls the response was much different. The young girls haven't been influenced by media to think that they "like a girl" is an insult yet. It was very cool to see Vanderbilt's Sarah Fuller be the first female football player in FSU history and represent the words "like a girl" on her helmet. I hope times are changing and we are making strides that doing anything "like a girl" is a positive statement.
My question is how to we keep girls from feeling this way as they get older in not only sports, but in every area of life? Do you think we as a society are progressing in the right direction with female empowerment?
Ambition is something people are born with. Limitation is something people are taught. This ad truly highlights this statement. The young girls in the ad haven’t learned their limitations yet.
ReplyDeleteI don’t think that our society does a good job of preserving the spirit that the young girls were born with, as one of the young girls says “it means to run as fast as you can!” I think our society teaches a limiting mindset in many areas of life that prevents all people, especially females and other minority groups, “don’t even bother trying to run as fast as you can, because you can never match the best of the best.”
We can probably add some levels of Marxist viewpoints, the extremely gifted among us are so far above the majority, so why should each ‘normal’ person even bother with doing their personal best.