With every blog I post I try to make a connection between field hockey and something that others can relate to in life. Before I chose my field hockey team as my topic to blog about I wanted to do something a little more general about female athletics and what it takes and what it means to be a female athlete.
This week my field hockey team prepared for a huge weekend which begins tomorrow. We have back to back games, which is unlikely in field hockey, against two conference teams. Conference games are very important to us because it is where we get our recognition and we know that if we do not win out our conference there is no chance of us getting a bid to the national tournament. So this week we came to work, ready, and focused to prepare.
Any athlete, male or female, prepares the same way. Whether they have routines or superstitions that need to be carried out throughout the week or they just show up to practice ready to work. Either way both genders do the same thing in hopes of accomplishing the same thing; a win.
For another class of mine, we were asked to evaluate a commercial based on things like what makes it creative, what makes it a good commercial and what appeals it uses. I tried to recall good commercials that I have seen in the past and nothing really jumped out at me until my roommates and I began talking about commercials and we recalled an ad campaign/commercial Always ran called “like a girl.”
In my opinion, this commercial is great, and it embodies everything I have ever stood for as a female athlete. If you haven’t seen the commercial you can view it on YouTube at this link http://bit.ly/1qew6XG . In short the commercial is about what it means when you tell someone they run like a girl, throw like a girl, hit like a girl, swing like a girl and so on. The directors of the commercial asked a bunch of older girls, probably around the ages of 18-20 what they thought it meant and they also asked some younger girls around the age of 10 the same questions.
The older girls did what the stereotype says and did a very “girly” dainty run or throw and were concerned about their hair and their nails. While the younger girls just did the action to the best of their ability. One little girl was asked what she thought it meant when someone asked you to run like a girl and her response was something along the lines of it means to run as fast as you can.
Always’s point of this commercial was to prove that girls can do just about anything a boy can do. And that “like a girl” should not be an insult. It kind of reminds me of the old Gatorade commercial with the song “anything you can do, I can do better” with the male and female athletes playing some sport against each other. I laugh at myself now, but when I was younger, I always thought that was such a cool commercial.
I have always been a little bit of a feminist and I think that comes from playing sports, one in particular being ice hockey, that were dominated by boys and being the only girl on a boys team. I was constantly brought down by them for playing the sport. Their attitude was always why bother? Or you are never going to be good. Insensitive things like that.
But look at me now. I am a division III two sport athlete on teams that are pretty good and I chalk all of up to the fact that I never let the “like a girl” stigma affect me negatively, I always used it as motivation.
