If You Are a Girl, Do It “like a Girl”

T. Tutkum Sağlam

Dr. Milagros

ASIU126

October 11, 2015

If You Are a Girl, Do it “Like a Girl”

“Always” is a popular menstrual product brand around the world owned by Procter and Gamble. The commercial “Like a Girl” was published by “Always” in June 2014, and directed by Lauren Greenfield, an American documentary film maker and photographer (2014). Greenfield won the “Best TV Commercial” Emmy Award for this Always commercial in September 2015. The first published commercial is based on empowering young girls and adolescents for being who they really are by challenging the stereotypes. The idea is to change the meaning of “like a girl” as an insult to something powerful and inspiring in society. The commercial has a strong aim challenges the stereotypes and fights against sexism with an effective concept, and it can be analyzed according to the aspects of visual rhetorical analysis.

Lauren Greenfield created this advertisement with Always in US. The video starts with the voice of the director, Lauren Greenfield, who starts asking questions to young and grown-up girls. She is also playing in the video as a director, but the main focus on the video is the answers of the questions that she is asking. The commercial is divided into two parts, and it is a social experiment with a well organized script. The first part includes the impressions of adult women, young boy and man when director says “fight like a girl”. Performers are acting as what comes first to their minds when Lauren says the phrase. All of the performers in the first part are not-surprisingly acting with the same expressions. Some of them are shaking their arms and doing gawky faces, so the impressions include every weird act which is not related to running at all. The first thing that comes to their minds is being weak, careless and unsuccessful according to the scene. The second part includes the young girls as performers with the same questions. However, young girls are reacting completely different compare to the older ones. They are running, fighting and throwing exactly as who they really are without considering the meaning of the phrase as a bad thing. They look confident, ambitious and powerful. This is evidence that during puberty, being a girl becomes an insult. “Always” took a step to make this change and challenge the stereotyped phrase with this powerful video as Lauren says “When the words ‘like a girl’ are used to mean something bad, it is profoundly disempowering. I am excited to be a part of the movement to redefine ‘like a girl’ into a positive affirmation.” (2014)

The purpose of the video is to change the meaning of “like a girl” into something beautiful and powerful by using hash tags on social media, and by visiting their websites. While the purpose of the video is clearly indicating the message, the brand has the huge opportunity to be liked and got attention from possible buyers who are also women. The main audience is young adults and girls, because the commercial wants to change the meaning by telling the girls to share their stories and memories while they are doing something like a girl by social media, and wants to publish them to the world. The video has an effective message for women who watch this video, and the aim can be achieved by the participation of its audience.

In order to analyze the commercial rhetorically, it is needed to analyze it in terms of rhetorical triangle as Aristotle claimed according to ethos, pathos and logos (Hesford and Brueggemann, 2006). Rhetor of the commercial is the director Lauren Greenfield and she is using the actors and actresses as a narrator while they act differently according to their personalities. It can be seen that she is directing the commercial as a performer, and it makes the video confidential. Besides, her personal life includes analysis of adolescent girl’s problems and culture according to her books and photographs (Lichter-Mark, 2013). Therefore, ethos is used with the author’s point of view through using the performers as a describer. Since the director is a well-known artist with the related knowledge about young girls and their issues, she performs on ethos by using related brand for girls. Moreover, there is no sign for the product “Always” until the end of the video, which backs up the purpose. On the other hand, pathos is being used mostly in the video with strong emotions. Pathos has the biggest impact in this video’s second part when the little girls are talking. The part that touches the audience mostly is when the little girls start to run like themselves and strong. The question mark is forming in audience’s minds “How did we lose that much confidence while growing up?” By pathos, the rhetor shows the audience the little girls as their past, and audience reacts by realizing the ugly truth. The norm of doing something like a girl means exactly same especially in particular popular culture and also in the world, so the video appeals an emotional content to the audience when all the little girls react confidently and trusty with their child innocence compare to the mocking acts of adults. Pathos is also used when the director asks the young boy “Did you just insult your sister?” and the young boy reacts with a complicated answer. Young boy even did not realize that it was a bad thing to say when it comes to their relatives. In this particular example, pathos can appeal the men as an audience with the words what the young boy says. People who watch the video can make a relation of their behaviors in their daily lives while witnessing the fact what is shown in the commercial. Logos are appealing in the commercial with the relation of the product and the aim of the video. The video says as a text that “During puberty, a girl’s confidence plummets”, and it also says “”Always” wants to change that”. Since the girls are starting using Always when they are starting to have periods in their puberty, Always can change the meaning of being a girl and doing everything proudly as a girl in order to be strong and confident. The aim can be achieved by getting attention to young girls to get them be strong and who they really are by logos.