WMST
205
Mondays
2:30 – 5:20 pm
Blog 1- Social Media
Presentation by Always
Prompt 1: My
cultural artifact is the social media presentation by Always Campaign in which Director, Lauren Greenfield, interviews
women, men, boys and girls by asking them to demonstrate how to “Run Like a
Girl.” The presentation demonstrates how
adult women and men show stereotypes of women doing physical activities. The women who exists outside of the gender
binary demonstrate weakness, no confidence and very low self-esteem. The purpose of Director Lauren Greenfield’s
“Run Like a Girl” presentation was to bring awareness to the limits society has
set on women doing physical activities and their confidence.
Prompt 2: The
gender expression in the Always
Campaign show females as weak and with no confidence. The subtext of the
message is to help break the barriers that females have to endure and build
confidence in young females so when they become adults they will have the
confidence to strive and be successful. For
example, the women were running without any effort and lacked confidence. The men were mocking the female’s ability to
run and laughing at how they were interrupting a female running. The text in
this presentation shows traditional ideas of femininity because the women did
not have the confidence to show their best ability in any of the physical
activities they were being asked to demonstrate. However, the young females
demonstrated with confidence their ability to participate in physical
activities. The young females ran with
such confidence by running with their hands beside them while running straight and
fast. The Director, Lauren Greenfield
states in her social media presentation, “We need to rewrite the rules.” She is talking about giving our future
generation of females the confidence to go out and be accepted for their
ability to do physical activities and not to be judged for their gender. We
need to look at the message we are sending to children. Lauren states, “We need
to look into the confidence crisis when girls reach puberty and the negative
association when girls transitioned into their teens.” For example, when the adult females were
asked, “why did you run so girly”? The
adult females were not sure why they demonstrated their running as they did,
with no confidence and mocking the demonstration. They were using stereotypes
that were embedded in them as adolescents.
Lauren attempted to challenge and push back against traditional ideas
about gender expression because she wants to not only educate females but also
males. She would like females to find
their own power and to follow their own path with confidence. The message Lauren
is conveying is to go out and empower females to do their best with confidence
and not just empower females for support, but also would like to see support
from males.
Prompt 3: I
believe the presentation by Always
Campaign represents gender in pop culture because it demonstrates oppression
for females. It is clear that the Always
presentation demonstrated diversity (older, younger and ethnicity) among
females because the director wanted to show how this is a worldwide problem,
and we need to break the stereotypes and educate our nation. Society should
start with changing our views and demolishing these stereotypes of female
participating in physical activities. If the United States follows the logical
appeals of females becoming athletes presented in the Always demonstration, maybe we can influence other countries to follow
our example. Let us strive to make this world a better place, one female at a
time, by supporting them and giving them the confidence to blossom into
beautiful women that they are. Females
just want to be accepted and appreciated for their abilities, which was
beautifully demonstrated in the Always video.
The target audience is females and males because the presentation brings
awareness to support confidence within the young female population.
Prompt 4: As I
examined the Always presentation
using Wendy’s Griswold’s cultural diamond, the cultural object is targeted to
female youth, women and men to build a teaching guide to all females by
supporting confidence. The social world
is for everyone, including females and males not only nationwide, but globally,
to break the stereotypes, educate and build confidence for generations to
come. The producers of the cultural
object are the director, Lauren Greenfield and the Procter & Gamble. Of
course, Procter & Gamble sponsored the director, Lauren Greenfield so they
can receive a profit off sale of Always’
products. The company made a smart move
because their brand Always will be
forever be remembered for building young women’s confidence. The connections between the producer and
receiver is to bring awareness and build confidence so every time a female
purchases Always product, the
producer will be making profit and bringing awareness to the cause. The
receivers are women so they can be inspired to have enough confidence in
whatever they strive to do or become. In addition, men are receivers also because
we are educating men by supporting and building women’s confidence.
Angelina, I could not agree with you more regarding your chosen representation of how our society is knowingly choosing to oppress young little girls and women through means of "stereotypical" actions. I love your thoughts and ideas about allowing one woman at a time to make a move in the right direction towards other countries mimicking our chosen behavior to simply embrace and acknowledge females for who and what they truly are, beautiful. Over all, you did well at expressing and representing your cultural artifact, I can definitely say that I appreciate your view point and motives.
ReplyDeleteProps to "Always" for starting a movement. They brought to light how femininity is taught to be weak in society. I found it very interesting how a young male had the stereotype embedded into his mental model where as the young females demonstrated no change in their running. Furthermore, the older female had learned that running "like a girl" meant to be running in a very unmotivated and untrained way. That shows how females are taught to see being a girl as being very non-physical in the activities they should do. I think the saddest part is that many people are in the situation as the young male, thinking that maintaining the idea that girls are weak is not necessarily an insult to his immediate family members with that gender. The moment everybody understands fomenting an idea of weakness in females affects them directly is when they will stop thinking this way.
ReplyDeleteI remembered when I first saw this commercial, it caught my attention to see how many people portrayed a girl running in similar ways. It saddens me to see how we are suppose to act like that or that it is usually stereotypical of us to do it. I am glad that "Always" is starting this movement in order to stop with representation to what a girl is suppose to look like but instead express the inner beauty and confidence each women has individually.
ReplyDelete