In Always #LikeAGirl, a YouTube video gone viral, filmmaker and director Lauren Greenfield challenges the globally popular perception about adolescent girls. A perception that crumbles their confidence and fills them up with self-doubt, to an extent that 'like a girl' starts to sound like an insult to them and they feel the need to discard 'girly' things, choices and characteristics. For instance, the colour pink. How many of you were brave enough to admit to liking pink in your teens? Not many, let's face it.
The fear of being termed 'girly' haunts many teen girls. Greenfield has attempted to fight this fear in her video. She asked a bunch of people, of both genders and different age groups, to show her what it was like to run, fight and throw like a girl. All of them depicted girls as weak, devoid of strength and goofy.
However, when 10-year-old Dakota - the first little 'girl' in the group - was asked to show the same actions, they were completely different from those of the previous set. In fact, when another little girl was asked what she understood when told to run like a girl, she said it meant, "Run as fast as you can." So, is like a girl a good thing? "Sounds like a bad thing," said a young one. But should it?
Here's to making 'like a girl' mean amazing things, watch: