Natasha Brown asks if a campaign to build up women’s confidence in sport, is really just another put down.
Women jogging, women swimming, women spinning (not as in sewing), women on court (netball, tennis), women on the football pitch (instead of being told to get off it) – all these and more (not forgetting the Zumba classes) are featured in This Girl Can, a nationwide publicity campaign sponsored by Sport England and designed to promote sporting activity among women.
What’s not to like?
What’s dislikeable, as this girl sees it, is the deep and disturbing disconnect between (1) promoting a seamless sequence of fun-loving positivity and (2) providing women with the opportunity to compete in fully fledged sport. Whereas the latter leads up to victory (and defeat) in the real thing, the former is so light and fluffy it can only mean putting women down as non-contenders – all over again.
Some will say I’m being too harsh. It’s all very well for you, Natasha. You’re already in training, but most women need to be encouraged just to jiggle about a bit. Surely it’s a step in the right direction.
No, it’s a backward step. Going down this path means herding women into a separate slow lane, away from the boys. Broadcasting the idea that women can only expect to jiggle about a bit, can only undermine the real women who are fighting and sweating to be taken seriously in sport.
It would be totally unacceptable if women were set baby questions on quiz shows because we can’t be expected to know the grown-up answers – but This Girl Can is the sporting equivalent of that patronising attitude. It says: know your place, girl, on the nursery slopes of this sporting life.
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Accordingly, instead of going onto the track for the 10km event, try jogging round the park; not boxing (too risky), better keep to ‘boxercise’. Stick to the splash sessions, love, rather than lane swimming – to be honest, I made the last one up, but the logic is fully in keeping with the actual campaign.
A case in point is the ‘Grace vs Pace’ video, in which role model Grace giggles at men for shaving their legs to help them go faster. ‘I don’t go fast at all’, she jokes – as if this is going to teach men to take us seriously. Instead it suggests there’s only one, possible reason why a woman would want to go running – to burn off the calories from the latest choccy biccy, obviously.
The whole thing is like a teacher talking down to the kids with coloured stickers and ditzy posters, because that’s the only way to encourage them, supposedly.
Equally off-putting is the campaign’s hard stuff – the bit that’s meant to be no holds barred. For example, the picture of a girl and a football with the caption: ‘I kick balls – get over it’; likewise, the campaign slogan ‘sweating like a pig, feeling like a fox.’ In other words, just when you think it’s going to get serious, This Girl Can gets the giggles instead.
It’s not that I’m against self-deprecation, of the feminine or masculine variety. But for a change I would like to see women engaged in hard-fought, sporting competition, and for this to be promoted to both men and women as a straightforward, positive outcome (without any asides, qualifying statements or funny bits in brackets).
In the end, it comes down to this: you can’t imagine a jolly jokey campaign inviting men to jiggle their squiggles because, chaps, you’ll feel that much better for all the fun you’ve had together. It’s unimaginable, isn’t it? Similarly, I can’t imagine that This Girl can give women a lift. Instead it puts us back in the box marked ‘not to be taken seriously’; and that’s why this girl cannot accept it. I worry that if we accept the invitation to lose ourselves in playful activity, rather than finding our physical side we are likely to be losing the fight for equality.
Original photos by JD Tagle based on images used in Sport England’s This Girl Can campaign http://www.thisgirlcan.co.uk/