'Always' On the Right Track

By Maria Fernanda Pereira Ywazaki on July 23, 2014

If you live in the U.S., then it is most likely you have bumped across the annoyance of commercials in some YouTube videos.  The reason for commercials appearing in some videos and not in others still seems completely random to me, and the ones that bother me the most are those that can’t be skipped.  However, every once in a while a good or interesting commercial comes your way, like the “Poo-pourri” one, or a movie trailer.  Another commercial that piqued my interest recently is Always’ campaign #LikeAGirl.

Although we know there is an ulterior motive for this commercial–sell their products–we cannot deny that they brought to light something of social importance.  As much as society has progressed on the positive image of women, we are no quite there yet.  The Always commercial shows that we still view girly things or behaviors as something bad worth of an insult, we associate being a girl the equivalence of being whiney, wimpy, shallow and/or vain.  Any girl with these attributes we consider as “typical” and any man that may remotely present these attributes is considered gay or less of a man.  I think that the worst part of it all is that, in a subconscious level, we don’t think of them as just physical, but mental attributes, too.  I don’t mean that we consider girls with these characteristics as less intelligent, but will power, persistence and strength of character are paired with physical appearance.

The mind is unimaginably powerful.  I don’t mean this in The Secret type of power, rather that the brain and our thoughts can have physical influences in our bodies.  For example stress is completely in the mind, yet we suffer from very physical symptoms because of bad stressors.  As such, we don’t notice how our mind can handicap us, we limit ourselves to what we think we’re capable of accomplishing instead of pushing to the max to discover what we’re capable of doing.  In a way, this is how personal trainers work for some people, when the body is sending signals of fatigue and the mind is screaming that it has reached a limit, the personal trainer is screaming ‘not yet.’

The ‘Self-fulfilling prophesy’ is a perfect example of the strength of the mind.  Superficially described, it is a thought that becomes a reality due to our unconscious actions to make it real.  Basically, when someone is told by a ‘trustworthy’ source that he/she is not good at math–whether it is true or not–the person’s behavior will change and accommodate so he/she proves his/her lack of math skill.  Taking that into consideration, we must wonder how using ‘like a girl’ as an insult could affect the mind and actions during those vulnerable years of puberty.

So, we still have more progress ahead of us, but at least general belief is not as bad as during the times of old Aristotle.  In Ancient Greece, women were believed to be ‘incomplete’ men because our blood wasn’t hot enough to ‘create’ life–sperm–and were merely incubators–gives surrogacy a whole new view.  Also, on a more recent-ish belief, the ‘scientific’ reason women could not receive higher education and use their brains for complex thought was because all the blood would flow to the brain and leave the uterus arid and sterile.  That was the belief of physicians in the late 19, early 20th century, quite ludicrous now that we know better. Although, I would like to point out on the irony that because there are more and more career-driven women, while their uteri is not dried up from the lack of blood because it went all to the brain, some have waited until it is too late and they can’t have kids, or because something else is present in their life that gives them purpose and fulfilment they don’t plan on reproducing or even consider it.  I don’t find it wrong in any sense, just curiously funny that, in a way, it was true that women studying and getting careers would keep us from birthing.  However, with an over-populated world, is it really so bad that we slowed down with the baby-making?

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