Bothered by the "Run like a girl" commercial?

[Jean24]

So it's been around for a while but it was played during the halftime show of the superbowl. The add features younger boys, men, and women describing what it means to run like a girl and you get the stereotypical responses of people running in place like Velma from Scooby Doo. Then they asked girls and got completely different (and natural) responses, that showed full out effort on their part. At the end of the commercial it talks about how a teenage girls confidence drops from just a few years before. I had seen it before and it bothered me then, but I just walked away instead of figuring out what it was that pushed my buttons.

It seems to paint males in a negative light, for starters. It's not like they had any extremely young ones to show you how they perceived the way that a girl runs, nor did they show any older men (or women for that matter) running their hearts out as if running like a girl was running your hardest - and we know that's a good deal of the population.

Another thing that bothered me is that they paid millions during the superbowl to talk about the confidence issues of girls as if it's something the rest of us get to take for granted. Like how so many people think that white males get a free lunch and it's all flowers and rainbows if you're white and have a penis. I don't know about many of you but my confidence was never anybody's concern. Nobody ever took a superbowl commercial to tell my dad to come back from his child abandonment, to tell the world that a group attacking a person at school is wrong, to speak up when someone is being wrongfully blamed, that it's wrong to constantly have homosexuals and transsexuals at the butt of every joke, that it's wrong to cross the street when you see a group of men who are guilty of... being a group of men. Nobody ever paid millions for a superbowl commercial to tell people it's wrong that we preach how terrible racism and sexism is while being a female or a minority gets your bonus points for some applications either.

So yeah, that's where my confidence has been and that's the privilege that I have enjoyed as being born male and (perceived as at least) as being white. "Running like a girl" is so trivial, let some cisfemales try out white male privilege for a while.

[Tysilio]

It's not actually about social justice or who's-more-oppressed. It's a commercial for feminine hygiene products. Girls, and their mothers, are the target audience.

[Just Kate]

Lifting up and highlighting the very real difficulties of one group of people does IN NO WAY invalidate the struggles of those who are also oppressed (Even if they did not get a superbowl comercial). 

I'd love a pro-trans commercial, but I won't get angry because there are pro-gay, pro-women, pro-black commercials.  They also need greater acceptance and understanding in society.

Helping even one segment of belittled society helps all.

[Jean24]

Lifting up and highlighting the very real difficulties of one group of people does IN NO WAY invalidate the struggles of those who are also oppressed (Even if they did not get a superbowl comercial). 

I'd love a pro-trans commercial, but I won't get angry because there are pro-gay, pro-women, pro-black commercials.  They also need greater acceptance and understanding in society.

Helping even one segment of belittled society helps all.

I suppose you wouldn't get upset at those things. I couldn't help but notice that you left pro-men and pro-white. It's because they have that percieved easy life. They never have commercials that talk about how 90% of black men are unable or simply don't get help for depression if they have it. 65% of all people who commit suicide are white males. Suicide is the leading cause of death of the LGBTQA community. If women were the face of the depression and suicide problem, there would be a national womens depression and suicide awareness month, along with ribbons handed out at major events. Just look at breast cancer and prostate cancer. The affliction and mortality rates are extremely similar and yet one is getting 3 times the funding and 1000 times the publicity.

[Just Kate]

I suppose you wouldn't get upset at those things. I couldn't help but notice that you left pro-men and pro-white. It's because they have that percieved easy life. They never have commercials that talk about how 90% of black men are unable or simply don't get help for depression if they have it. 65% of all people who commit suicide are white males. Suicide is the leading cause of death of the LGBTQA community. If women were the face of the depression and suicide problem, there would be a national womens depression and suicide awareness month, along with ribbons handed out at major events. Just look at breast cancer and prostate cancer. The affliction and mortality rates are extremely similar and yet one is getting 3 times the funding and 1000 times the publicity.

I didn't mention
pro-men
pro-white
pro-native american
pro-depression awareness
pro-domestic abuse awareness
pro-cancer awareness
pro-animal

or many, many others.

That said, most commercials are pro-white and pro-male and especially pro-white male.  However that doesn't mean all white males aren't oppressed.  Our sexist, racist culture abuses them too with unrealistic expectations, alpha-male worship, and belittling their very real problems.  They need awareness too.

I'm glad this commercial exists and if a male oppression awareness video came out I'd applaud it to.  Oppressed peoples need to stand together, not diminish the experiences of others or be jealous of another oppressed group's air time. 

Be happy women's issues are getting so much attention now - because it wasn't always so.  We should be singing it from the rooftops!  Now we need to do our best to raise the issues felt by other oppressed groups so they also get air time.

[Ms Grace]

Doesn't bother me - always very glad to see any negative stereotype of any group squashed, smashed and ridiculed.

[ChiGirl]

Personally, I thought it was a great commercial. 

The only commercial that bothered me was Nationwide's that reminded you not to accidentally kill your children.

[suzifrommd]

Jean, I found that commercial profoundly upsetting as well:

* A commercial enterprise is trying to capitalize on the anger that women feel at being stereotyped. Buying sanitary supplies has nothing to do with women's confidence.
* It is not clear what causes adolescent girls to have a crisis of confidence. I'm not even sure that's true. Yes there are things that make girls more uncomfortable than boys, but there are things that make boys more uncomfortable, and those things are not even talked about.
* I have heard disparaging comments among women about men. "Isn't that just like a man?" is something I've heard an awful lot. No woman seems to have any problem with that.
* Finally, it evokes a deep concern I have with the current state of feminism. It seems to elevate those things that males tend to do well (throw and run, for example) into virtues females should aspire to, with no stomach for celebrating the things that women do well. No commercial is telling boys they should be better at the sort of things more girls excel at, but this commercial seems to be saying that it's not okay to run/throw like a girl.

[Eva Marie]

I thought the ad was rather thought provoking and did a great job in illustrating a common stereotype. I also thought that the ad did an effective job in pointing out that this "not good enough" message is delivered to girls by society about the time they enter puberty. It tells girls that they deserve ridicule because of who they are.

Trans women get similar messages from society because of who we are, and maybe that's why this ad resonated with me.

[Jill F]

One style of advertisement that I have never cared for are the ones where you don't have a freaking clue what the product being advertised actually was until the very end.  Seriously, don't keep me guessing, I have ADD and am likely to change the station.  Ads like this are about as effective to me as the annoying ones with people singing off-key or ones where they stick a knife in your heart and spent the next 25 seconds twisting it.

That being said, I thought that ad was shameless to make it look like a PSA where I more or less agreed with the message.  (See: "That's so gay.")   Albeit lessened in recent years, the systemic subjugation of women in our society persists to this day, and there is still very much progress to be made.   At the end of the day, the glass ceiling remains.

When you think about it though, what are common ways to belittle men?  What was stated in the ad was "throw like a girl", "run like a girl", and "fight like a girl".  Stupid stereotypes for sure.   What about terms like "pussy", "pantywaist", or "limpwristed"?   The subtext is that somehow women are deemed inferior, as are men who are not absloutely frothing with masculinity.  If women were seen as equally valid in our culture, wouldn't we have common insults like "You fart/belch/smell/swear/fail to understand/sh*t like a man"?  We certainly don't have a set of compliments for men that embrace some of the best feminine qualities, do we?   

Belittling women is something that is still done whether consciously or not by both sexes, and that most certainly needs to change.  It would be nice if your gender had zero impact on your level of success in this world, and unfortunately that won't happen just by asking nicely.