Where Them Girls At: The Continuing Saga Of Always’ #LikeAGirl Campaign
Emojis are everywhere, all the time. So why do so few of them picture girls?
Always, a brand known to many of us as a supplier of assorted menstrual pads and liners, has been trying to appeal to its young buyers. The #LikeAGirl campaign has resulted in a series of inspiring advertisements featuring pubescent girls slashing gender stereotypes and an interesting message.
Before diving into the advertisements themselves, specifically the latest one about emojis, I decided to poke around on the campaign website. The “epic battle” and following call to action strategically placed next to screenshots from the newest ad makes for an interesting combination of social justice martyrdom and typical business behavior.
Underneath the Learn Mores and Watch Videos lie two product recommendations: a pad and a liner. Do I smell commodification? Food for thought.
With that background in mind, let us turn to the newest #LikeAGirl ad. “Girl Emojis” is the third of the main three #LikeAGirl videos. The Always YouTube channel has dozens of videos, but only a few of them make it to scores of consumers.
Like the ones before, this video features girls in middle school through high school. The girls establish the importance of emojis in communication, listing the conveyance of emotion as a gratification. They then examine the available emojis on their mobile devices and list for the production team which ones picture girls.
The results are disappointing. Girls are seen wearing pink and doing stereotypically girly things like getting their nails painted and styling their hair. To remedy this, Always asks the girls what they would like to see girls doing instead. The answer? All the things girls do in reality. Playing sports, enforcing the law, and being confident humans are some suggestions.
Uses and dependency theory, a step up from uses and gratifications theory, states that not only do media satisfy needs; they also create them. Media consumers are caught in a loop of using media to satisfy their needs and having to find new outlets for additional needs created by the original media.
By creating every #LikeAGirl commercial, Always hopes that viewers will use the hashtag both to get the company some publicity and to make an effort to change society. Consumers will see the commercial, feel a desire to make emojis more diverse, and use the hashtag to send their support to Always.
Here’s where I get critical of the ad. Equal representation of gender is important. The termination of destructive stereotypes is important. Always has nailed the latter in their previous ads, in which girls literally smash stereotypes. Their first ad is especially effective; it shows girls being themselves, like girls, which suits the hashtag.
Girls should never be made to feel less-than or weak or helpless. Always appears to understand the limitations and changes of thought girls face as they mature, and are trying their best to instill confidence in them. However, I am unsure of how effective the fight to add more emojis to the throng is going to be in increasing confidence.
