Gabby Bates
4A
In the phrase “like a girl”, if you replaced the word “girl” with any ethnicity or religious group, it would be completely unacceptable; however, having the word “girl” in that phrase doesn’t trouble anyone who says it. Throughout my life, I have heard that phrase spoken about me, as well as many other girls, and that’s one of the ways sexist inferences are formed. People who assume that females are not strong, both physically and mentally, are oblivious, and this ignorant mindset needs to change.
Negative comments about doing activities “like a girl” can lead to low self-esteem and self-confidence in females. For instance, Claire Shipman and Katty Kay, authors of The Confidence Gap, discovered “there is a particular crisis …show more content…
In the first place, Lauren Greenfield, director of the Like a Girl commercial, realized the impact her Like a Girl commercial had on people when “I dropped my son off at his US day camp, one of his counsellors came to see me. She said she sobbed when she watched Like a Girl, and that it changed her, because she had put up with that phrase her whole life” (2). The negative effects that this phrase on many women is enormous. It makes girls feel less than others, weak, and not good enough to do what they love to do. This phrase can change people’s lives if we can learn to use it in a positive way. Also, most women have been conditioned over the generations that “those three words suggest someone who’s useless, weak, laughable perhaps. We’ve become accustomed to using the description of a young female as a derogatory, throwaway remark, an insult” (Lauren Greenfield 4). The fact that people can describe this phrase in such an appalling way is mind boggling. “Like a girl” needs to be thought of as a positive and encouraging phrase that can be used to describe the hard working women in this world. Women and girls need to start carrying themselves with the strength and self-confidence that we have, and evolve “like a girl” to be a strong and powerful message rather than one of weakness and
4A
In the phrase “like a girl”, if you replaced the word “girl” with any ethnicity or religious group, it would be completely unacceptable; however, having the word “girl” in that phrase doesn’t trouble anyone who says it. Throughout my life, I have heard that phrase spoken about me, as well as many other girls, and that’s one of the ways sexist inferences are formed. People who assume that females are not strong, both physically and mentally, are oblivious, and this ignorant mindset needs to change.
Negative comments about doing activities “like a girl” can lead to low self-esteem and self-confidence in females. For instance, Claire Shipman and Katty Kay, authors of The Confidence Gap, discovered “there is a particular crisis …show more content…
In the first place, Lauren Greenfield, director of the Like a Girl commercial, realized the impact her Like a Girl commercial had on people when “I dropped my son off at his US day camp, one of his counsellors came to see me. She said she sobbed when she watched Like a Girl, and that it changed her, because she had put up with that phrase her whole life” (2). The negative effects that this phrase on many women is enormous. It makes girls feel less than others, weak, and not good enough to do what they love to do. This phrase can change people’s lives if we can learn to use it in a positive way. Also, most women have been conditioned over the generations that “those three words suggest someone who’s useless, weak, laughable perhaps. We’ve become accustomed to using the description of a young female as a derogatory, throwaway remark, an insult” (Lauren Greenfield 4). The fact that people can describe this phrase in such an appalling way is mind boggling. “Like a girl” needs to be thought of as a positive and encouraging phrase that can be used to describe the hard working women in this world. Women and girls need to start carrying themselves with the strength and self-confidence that we have, and evolve “like a girl” to be a strong and powerful message rather than one of weakness and