“Like a Girl”

(1) The message of the video is about the stigma of how society sees and expects women
to act, look, and perform. At a young age, until present times, being called a ‘girl’ is always used
as an insult, especially to men who are called as ‘sissies’ for being what people call ‘feminine’
because for society, this insult always refers to people who are easily shaken. (2) Society taught
us that being a girl means to be vain, soft, physically weak, and inferior to men because we lived
through mostly patriarchal societies that only grant men access to education and various
opportunities, unlike women. (3) The video, in a form of an interview, revealed to not only the
viewers, but also the people they interviewed that being a girl is only a gender identity and that it
is still up to us, as individuals, to do whatever we want and not pay attention to what society
thinks is proper to be classified as ‘feminine’ or ‘masculine’. Gender is fluid, and we have our
own identity, even though we may be different, but that doesn’t stop us from doing what we
want. Today, we still suffer the effects of toxic masculinity because ‘traditional’ people view
‘womanly’ acts like cooking, sewing, etc. are disgraceful actions when it comes to men, and that
women are to blame if a man acts on his sexual desires.

(4) Despite various age targets, I believe that the video is intended to people of every generation,
especially to millennials, who may have families in the future, that gender shouldn’t restrict us
into a mould society want us to do, but to also support equal rights and view of what both men
and women can do. (5) In the video, it was sad to see that children who were interviewed showed
that they grew up seeing girls as soft, but it was effective in a way that this will make people see
that gender is only a construct and that we can do anything without trapping ourselves in a box
society expects us to do. For years, women have fought for equal rights as men, but the stigma of
women seen as homemakers stuck around because ‘traditional’ women believed that their bodies
are only for baby making, rather than being also used as to explore various activities they can
also use it with. (6) After watching the video, and as what the other women mentioned, to so
something ‘like a girl’ is only a gender identity because no matter what we do as individuals,
gender does not affect us.

(1) What is the message?

(2) What is the purpose of the message?
(3) How is the message conveyed?
(4) Who is the target audience of the message?
(5) What makes the commercial effective?
(6) What does it mean to do something “like a girl”?