Like a Girl

Jillian Walinski

COM 470

11/12/2020
 This paper will discuss what it means to be a girl in modern-day society and how we can

train our minds to reject negative stereotypes about females. It will also touch upon the effects

that gendered stereotypes can have on kids and adolescents growing up. Lastly, persuasion

techniques to assist in one’s goal to accomplish a stereotype-free heart and mind will be

discussed, as well.

The advertising campaign, “Like a Girl”, from the company Always, is about gender

equality and female empowerment. It touches upon topics such as gender stereotypes and

societal views toward girls and women. It’s important for the world to know that although

women are treated as lesser than men, women rise to the occasion to prove that this shouldn’t be

the case and that women should be treated equally. It’s also important for women and little girls

who are growing up to understand that they are not inferior and can do anything they set their

minds to. Always’ goal with this advertising campaign is to persuade all people to stop feeding

into negative stereotypes about females and to teach girls and women to believe in themselves.

A girl’s teenage years are vital in creating the adult she will become. Putting emphasis on

one’s effort as opposed to ability is beneficial in nurturing an adolescents’ self-worth (Lipari,

2004). The things you learn, experience, and see will stick with you into adulthood, which is why

it’s so important to teach young girls about their self-worth. Teenage girls are too often criticized

and not supported often enough. This advertising campaign from Always is a perfect example of

what needs to be happening more in the world. Our society is progressing in the right direction,

but there is still much work to do, just like the work that Always is doing.

There are many aspects of life that females can feel more empowered in. One aspect

would be females’ personal lives, whether it be in their social relationships, love lives, or with

their families. Women can often feel pressured by friends, family, or partners to fulfill the roles
that their gender has constructively placed on them. Male friends can be unfairly biased by

treating their female friends in a dainty manner because they inherently view women as weaker

than themselves. Parents may raise their children differently based on the child’s sex. Parents

may be more rough and tough with their son and not with their daughter, but it shouldn’t be

expected that the boy can handle this and the girl cannot. In romantic relationships, men often

look at women to be the caretaker or housewife. Luckily, society is moving forward and this is

changing, allowing women to pursue a career, if they so choose. Another aspect would be in the

workplace. There are several things that should change when it comes to women in professional

settings. First off, sexual harassment toward women is much too prevalent. The culture of many

companies is not conducive to a woman’s success, and often managers turn a blind eye to these

horrible situations. Secondly, there is not enough female representation in the board room of

most companies, so decisions are being made with bias in them because the boardrooms are full

of people that are exactly the same. Lastly, women have gotten discriminated against during the

hiring process because of the possible factor of maternity leave. Having a child is a

representation of a woman’s strength, not to mention it’s completely unjust for a man to get hired

over a woman simply because she may take maternity leave. One more aspect that women can

feel more empowered in would be the outside environment. Society places many pressures and

unrealistic ideals on women based on what to look like and how to behave. Women are often

objectified and criticized, which can make them feel dehumanized. Allowing women to

understand that these things are unnecessary and supporting them to feel comfortable to

represent themselves in the way they desire is what Always is getting at in this advertising

campaign.
 The construct of gender and gender roles aren’t just about the way a woman should

behave. Gender ideology is associated with career path, romantic relationships, and the steps that

a woman “should” take in life (Larsen, 2021). In Always’ advertising campaign, they wanted to

show the group of younger girls that they don’t need to abide by the gender norms and

stereotypes that people in their lives may place on them. As children turn into adolescents, the

experiences they gather regarding the expectations of their gender are meaningful to their

outcome as an adult (Larsen, 2021). That is why Always’ message to little girls is important,

because it teaches them from a young age that gender roles don’t need to be followed.

According to the Journal of Business Ethics, economic empowerment of women may

lessen gender inequality in society (Lewellyn, 2020). This goes along with the aspect of female

empowerment in the workplace. If women are justifiably placed in larger roles more often, this

can help to dissolve the negative stereotypes that Always was talking about. Women are

considered empowered if they make their own decisions regarding health care, mobility,

spending of household income, major household purchases, and decisions regarding

contraceptive use (Riaz & Pervaiz, 2018). That is why education and employment play such a

large role in female empowerment because women who are educated and employed are more

likely to make these decisions for themselves (Riaz & Pervaiz, 2018).

Diving deeper into women’s issues in the workplace, sexual harassment toward women

has been occurring for years and often goes unpunished. More than just avoiding the predatory

behavior, fighting against sexual harassment is about empowering women to fight for safe spaces

and prevent the harassment from even happening. The economic empowerment of women can

assist in keeping predators away (Hollis, 2020). If women learn to use their voices and hold a

strong front to begin with, this could potentially stop a situation of sexual harassment from
occurring in the first place. However, society hasn’t always been an environment that is

supportive of female empowerment, hence why women may need to learn to use the voice they

have that has been repressed for so long. A large part of the issue of sexual harassment in the

workplace is that it usually stems from the office environment. Changing the culture at work to

become more conducive for work for all genders is going to take more than just training sessions

(Latham, 2020).

Women have been taught to abide by impossible standards of beauty and to behave in a

way that is lady-like and parallel to female gender roles. However, Always is pushing away from

gender roles and letting girls know that they are not the negative stereotypes that society tells

them they are. Our society is progressing in a way that supports females’ true selves and accepts

them as they are. Nowadays, women are more in tune with the idea of loving their bodies, but

may still be dissatisfied with their appearance because of the cultural norms of female beauty

(Murray, 2016). Always wants to show young girls that a woman doesn’t have to be dainty, she

can be strong. A strong woman has no defined appearance, she can be whatever and whoever she

desires.

The purpose of Always’ advertising campaign is to persuade people, young and old, of

any gender, to stop going along with negative stereotypes about females. Always uses two

persuasive techniques in this campaign including an emotional appeal, specifically aimed toward

guilt, and cognitive dissonance. An emotional appeal is a persuasive message that relies on

emotion to be persuasive. Always is relying on emotion to persuade viewers to stop feeding into

negative stereotypes toward girls and women. They want their audience to empathize with

females and understand what they are faced with and how they have been treated for so long. In

utilizing an emotional appeal, Always is focusing on the emotion of guilt. Guilt occurs when you
believe that your behavior does not meet your own standards, which is how Always represented

the females in their advertising campaign. One example of guilt from the campaign would be

when the little boy gets asked if he thinks he insulted his sister by making fun of girls. He says

he thinks he insulted other girls, but not his sister. It appears that he doesn’t give much thought to

insulting other girls, but he seems especially focused on believing that he didn’t insult his sister

because that would make him feel guilty. This is one route that Always wanted to take in trying

to persuade people to act and think differently.

Another example of guilt in the campaign would be when the blonde girl, Erin, was

talking about how girls’ self- confidence must go down when they hear people using the phrase

“like a girl” as an insult, especially as an adolescent when they are navigating the world while

figuring out who they are. You could hear the sincerity in her voice which showed that she felt

guilty for succumbing to pressures of society and making fun of girls in the ways that others do.

The viewers that are watching Erin feel guilty will most likely feel guilty, as well, especially if

the viewer knows that they would have said and done the same things as her, which is ultimately

Always’ goal. According to the North American Journal of Psychology, guilt increases with age,

but is reported to be felt more by girls than boys (Walter, 2006). This relates to the examples

from the campaign because the little boy only expressed a little bit of guilt in thinking that he

possibly insulted his sister, but Erin felt visibly more guilty because she thought she was

offending many people.

Using an emotional appeal is effective for this campaign because the topic is rooted in

emotion and how using the phrase “like a girl” affects how people feel. Also, focusing on using a

guilt appeal goes one step further in pulling at viewer’s heartstrings. Not only does the viewer

see several of the people in the campaign feeling guilty, but this will most likely make the viewer
feel guilty or emotional in some capacity, as well. According to Personality and Individual

Differences, a greater amount of guilt was associated with a greater likelihood of apologizing for

something (Howell, 2012). This is relevant to the people in the campaign back-tracking on how

they originally behaved. Their actions resulted in guilt, which ultimately made them want to

change their mind and explain themselves. I like that this campaign also shows raw emotion. The

people may or may not be actors, but the campaign seemed to want to have authentic reactions,

just as if the situation were happening to the viewer in the same moment.

In Always’ advertising campaign, they also utilize the persuasion technique of cognitive

dissonance. Cognitive dissonance is an aversive motivational state that people are motivated to

eliminate. This occurs when someone’s thoughts and beliefs don’t align with their actions and

behaviors. An example of cognitive dissonance in the Always campaign would be toward the

end of the video when one of the teenage girls is asked if she would change her actions when

acting out how a girl would run. Her answer was yes, which shows that she was experiencing

cognitive dissonance because her thoughts and beliefs didn’t align with her actions and

behaviors. In the beginning of the video, this girl was asked to run like a girl, so she performed

the action in a way that mocks girls, since the phrase “run like a girl” has always been used as an

insult. When this girl was asked if she wanted to redo her performance of running like a girl, she

accepted so that way she could eliminate the dissonance she was feeling from using a gender

stereotype.

Another example of cognitive dissonance in this campaign would be when the blonde

girl, Erin, is explaining how girls must feel when they hear someone use the phrase “like a girl”

as an insult. The way she describes how girls must feel bad about themselves when they hear this

shows that she doesn’t agree with using the phrase “like a girl” as an insult, however, when
asked to run like a girl, she did it in a way to make a mockery of girls. This coincides with what

it means to experience cognitive dissonance because her thoughts didn’t align with her actions.

According to the journal, Gender Issues, gender identity, gender stereotypes, and self-

perceptions influence each other in a way that reinforces cognitive consistency (Conlin, 2019).

This means that as long as one’s gender identity, gender stereotypes, and self-perceptions align,

they can reinforce each other in a positive way. However, if one doesn’t align with the others,

this will cause a large amount of cognitive dissonance because they are so closely related. In the

circumstance of this campaign, many of the females have experienced dissonance between their

gender identity and gender stereotypes. In the beginning of the video, many of the girls portray

gender stereotypes, but toward the middle and end of the video, many of them are shown either

performing an action to represent that women are strong or explaining that what they did earlier

wasn’t justified.

Using cognitive dissonance for this campaign was effective because it brings awareness

to an issue that people may not realize they feel dissonance toward. There may be viewers of this

campaign that realize their thoughts and actions don’t align after seeing the dissonance of others.

For example, an adolescent female viewer may see this campaign and experience dissonance

because she believes that women are strong, but she may say or do things that are representative

of gender stereotypes. In this scenario, Always’ goal is for this viewer to change her ways and

not experience dissonance anymore. This reaches the goal of Always wanting to persuade people

to stop using negative stereotypes about females. I like this persuasion strategy because it forces

viewers to actively think about where they might be going wrong regarding this issue. Not only

does cognitive dissonance persuade people to change something that isn’t right, it allows them to

self-reflect and make the decision to improve themselves.

appeal. A logical appeal is a persuasive message that relies on logic and reasoning to be

persuasive. In their campaign, instead of persuading viewers by drawing emotion out of them,

Always could have utilized facts and statistics about women to show that they are equal to their

male counterparts. For example, Always could have presented statistics from sports or financial

numbers from entrepreneurs to show what strong women are capable of. Logical appeals contain

educational information, so Always’ advertising campaign wouldn’t solely be about throwing

facts and statistics in the viewer’s face, but more so about the viewer learning and taking

something away from the campaign (Marshall, 1995). When an audience learns something,

instead of just being talked at, they tend to remember information more that way, which would

work in favor of Always’ goal of teaching people to stop using gender stereotypes.

Always believes in tearing down gender stereotypes and uplifting women. With their

advertising campaign, they want to teach young girls to believe in themselves and understand

that they don’t need to succumb to the pressures of society to look or act a certain way. Always

supports girls by representing their strength. This company understands the importance of girls

learning their self-worth and using their voice. With the use of emotional appeals and cognitive

dissonance, they can reach their goal of educating viewers to self-reflect and change for the

better.
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 Appendix

https://time.com/4653281/super-bowl-ads-commercials-most-influential-time/