As published June 2014, Marie Claire, US edition
Always™ and its corporate owner, Procter & Gamble, have been receiving a lot of praise around the interwebs these days for their #LikeAGirl campaign, launched June 26, 2014, with a video produced by Lauren Greenfield. The video has been viewed 37 million times and counting. Last week, HuffPo actually called it “a game changer in feminist movement”, which I suppose reveals how little Huffington Post knows about feminist movements, more than anything else.
But before you applaud the efforts of Always to raise girls’ self-esteem, remember that they’re also the people who bring you these ads. Because that stench of girl never goes away, and you can’t spend all day in the shower, use Always.
oh yes you did!
Thanks so much, Liz, for going there.
I have been nauseated, frankly, by all the P&G love in response to their new campaign. I am all for affirming girl power, but I think a holistic view of corporate activity is important too. A video with a straightforward girl positive message is nice, but when it is paired with the contradiction of selling products that trade on tired old *but you still stink* thinking…well..I can’t ignore that.
At least it’s a little better than Goldie Blox. Someone needs to do a study on all of these new ad campaigns and their ultimate impacts.
I find it really hard to assess these ad campaigns because I go straight to my negative feelings about the campaigns (similar to how you’re both feeling), but then I realize that the potential positive changes present in campaigns have to be acknowledged. I end up being really torn about how to feel about them. My 9-year-old daughter watched the LikeAGirl video and loved it, and it made an impact on her and I don’t know how I feel about that either.
YAY for this! I was hoping to hear a few more voices like this… I wrote this a few day after it launched… after I had like the 10th person send me a link to it… https://gentlycircles.wordpress.com/2014/07/02/likeagirl-a-cover-story/
The comment you made about Huffington is classic!
In the core of this is a truth, a real, well illustrated truth… and we get that, it feels great to see it, to know we can change it by coming to here.. simple real young girls being ALL that they can be… but it’s that Tagline… can we separate the message from the marketing? Maybe, but we’ve not illustrated that yet.