Of course this girl can!

I usually don’t post a lot of “opinion” posts on this blog – mainly because I find that there are so many depressing things happening in the world, that having to discuss them all on this blog would just make me sad and miserable.

But, it has been 4 days since I saw the ad below and the first time I got absolutely outraged but thought this rage would slowly go away.

However, it seems that every time I now see some sort of sports ad or any sort of sport/fitness related post/tweet/image/whatever, this ad pops up at the back of my mind and I feel like breaking shit.

So go on, have a look…

Now, after 4 days of getting angry I felt like I had to reflect on WHY I was getting so pissed off and the truth is that it’s not the “This Girl Can” movement itself that makes me angry as hell.

If you know me, you know that IM ALL ABOUT women inspiring women, women getting into fitness, women helping women out, women feeling safe/ comfortable/ happy to train or do whatever they want no matter what they look like, what level of fitness they have etc etc etc – I am totally all about GIRL POWER!

I am a proud feminist and in short, all I want is for everybody on this earth (NO MATTER WHAT!) to be seen as equals.

So what pisses me off is the fact that we even need this ad and that it requires to use slogans like this:

I jiggle therefore I am

when other current fitness inspiration I see on the regular that is more geared towards a male audience use slogans and images like:

Just do it Ronaldo

Even before this ad I was fed up with the fact that I apparently need to justify to society that parts of my body “jiggle” when I move, or that I sweat when I do exercise (or god forbid even SMELL OF SWEAT), or any other bullshit that men get to somehow own and be proud of.

So to add on to the everyday disappointments and rage I feel as a woman of this world, imagine how I felt (if you can?) when I saw this ad for the first time.

I mean, you’d never ever see an ad like that on national TV featuring only men (maybe as a parody but never as an “inspirational ad”) – and I suppose at the end of the day – that is why I felt like smashing up my TV when I first saw it.

Because not only am I bombarded with images, ads, films, stories etc about how I should be all day long, but now there’s an ad like that as well that to me patronises (probably without meaning to!) so many things that I hold very close to my heart.

So Im happy that there’s an initiative like “This Girl Can” because I am all for women inspiring and helping other women – but so many other things surrounding it makes me genuinely sad and angry.

I know many badass, inspirational women who have motivated and inspired me to get fitter – and they have done so by owning every aspect of the reality of doing a hard workout without making excuses or making it feel patronising.

So what’s your take on it? You feel a bit like me or you think Im totally overreacting?

1 thought on “Of course this girl can!

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