This Girl Can

[Sittinginthesun]

I don't often venture onto this Board, but would be very interested in your opinions on the This Girl Can campaign.

I understand the idea and aims, although I'm not terribly impressed by the idea of "girls" being worried about getting red sweaty faces, and therefore not exercising or taking part in sport.

DS1's school have sent an email explaining that the girls will be participating in a This Girl Can event over three lessons next week. The handful of boys in DS1's class will be in lessons as usual.

DS is furious! He argues that there are plenty of non active boys in his class who don't take part in sport.

I'm too hot to think this through properly, but wondered whether this subject has been covered on here yet?

Than the campaign I mean!! I love personal stories!!

If you haven't seen the latest ad, I really like it:

I actually have the same t-shirt as one of the women in this video, which makes it feel a bit more personal to me!

I love that video Pringle!! It always makes me a bit teary and proud.

I hate it sorry. I find it really patronising.

I still dislike the use of the world girl, but I find the ad content uplifting and I like seeing it.

My Womens group has received money for activities through the this Girl Can campaign.
As a very overweight middle aged woman who walks with a stick, I love seing people's faces when I talk about my kickboxing classes and aerobics dance classes with glow sticks.
These are things I never thought I would be able to do or afford and I feel great to be able to do them.
I also do Bollywood style exercise classes. They are reaching the people that never feel able to do anything like that.

I think I would just urge anyone to take a look at the website or follow the Facebook page. It's not meant to be patronising and is supposed to reach all women whatever your age, fitness or size. Missnevermind, your group sounds terrific. When I started on breeze rides I was on a second hand bike and didn't have any fancy cycling gear. I did 30 miles yesterday on my own and thoroughly enjoyed it. Breeze gave me the confidence to do that. The link is on the website for Breeze, but take a look. There is loads of information.

My 19 year old twins think it is a patronising load of Bull. They have only seen the advert which they loathe. I didn't realise there were lots of events/money being thrown at it and it was part of a wider campaign.

I think there needs to be a fundamental shift in school PE away from traditional team sports in the secondary years. If you aren't "good "at Hockey/netball etc you tend to feel sidelined.They could do exercise where you are not judged such as Zumba, where everyone can achieve at their own level and the teacher is not constantly haranguing girls. If girls want to wear tracksuit bottoms rather than shorts or a skirt -let them.

My friend was a PE teacher at a school that experimented with sports afternoons for each year group. Timetabling all the staff for each afternoon on one year group meant they could offer a really diverse range of sports competitive and non competitive and when the afternoon ended the kids could shower or go home - no having to go back to class sweaty/ wet haired/in a panic etc. It had amazing feedback and results. The pupils were much more enthusiastic and motivated. about exercise. Lots of kids wanted to do GCSE/BTEC PE courses. Three years in a new head sadly pulled the programme.

Thanks everyone. I have been discussing these replies with DS. He is clear that getting more girls into sport is a good thing. The problem, in his 13 year old head, is that he would love to spend those three periods doing sport.

Lots of interesting chats today about how girls could be encouraged to do sport. I think part of his difficulty in seeing this, is that he has lots of girl friends who do sport, and he sees them as being the popular and cool girls.

Conversion has apparently moved on to a rare fight that broke out between two boys at lunchtime!

Dds school did this last year,not that many girls went for it.Dd used to be quite sporty but the school keeps having mixed sports lessons where the girls don't try as the hate being watched by all the boys(this is secondary school).

I was just going to post a flippant reply saying that as a 13 YO girl I'd have begged to let a boy take my place. I hated sport with a blind, screaming passion. I was so jealous of the kids with good excuses not to participate. I hated everything about it. I was challenging other gender norms at the time, but, simply put, I fucking hated sport. I even managed to win a few minor things, but as soon as I could give it up I trashed my kit. I didn't hit a gym until many years later when I discovered that when I wasn't been yelled or whistled at to do this or that or run here or there or pay attention then exercise was not all bad. I don't mind exercise if other people get the hell out of my face, if I don't have to do classes or team things and if I don't have to talk to anyone. Yeah, I'm the one on the treadmill staring straight ahead and studiously aviding everyone in the pool. I also love walking if there is a point to it a nice pub.

What I am getting at is that this should not be compulsory for girls.

Also, this makes a lot of sense to me I think there needs to be a fundamental shift in school PE away from traditional team sports in the secondary years. If you aren't "good "at Hockey/netball etc you tend to feel sidelined.They could do exercise where you are not judged such as Zumba, where everyone can achieve at their own level and the teacher is not constantly haranguing girls. If girls want to wear tracksuit bottoms rather than shorts or a skirt -let them.

I totally agree Wormulonian, the emphasis on competitive sports made me hate PE and it took me a decade after leaving school to realise it's not exercise I hate but competitive sports! Gymnastics, zumba, running (without it always being a race!)

Whoops posted too soon. All of those things I mentioned would have inspired me to have a healthy lifestyle more than stupid competitive sports where I always lost or let my team down, causing horrible social pressure

Sittinginthesun maybe you should venture onto the feminism threads a bit more often as it may open your eyes to the need for campaigns like This Girl Can.

When boys and men have female allies like yourself standing up for them and saying (I hate this phrase but it's a thing!) "what about the menz" or NAMALT (not ALL men are like that) it shows just how ingrained it is for us to worry about the few tiny areas in which men feel hard done by, rather than the many larger arenas in which they have the upper hand.

Sometimes singling out women and girls for special treatment is necessary to help level the playing field.

DDs sports day was last week, she's 15 and was chosen to do the discus. What I hadn't realized was that all girls events were to take place within their sports lessons over the week as over the years less and less girls were happy or wanting to take part due to the jibes and under radar comments that were being made by the boys both during but mostly after sports day as in social media comments about the girls bodies.

So bloody sad.

That's infuriating acornsandnuts. Girls are being made to feel uncomfortable, put off sport and having their events moved and not put on as they should be as part of the sports day due to the effects of boys sexualising them and viewing them as being there for their bodies to be judged and commented on. The objectification of women and girls has not only put girls off sport there but lead to them not being able to compete on an equal footing as part of the day. It's galling the girls at your daughters school are having to put up with that and it's having such an effect.

I agree NoLove infact had I had known this was happening earlier I may of suggested the boys do their Sports day during PE and let the girls crack on with a bloody good sports day without feeling judged.

That's a very good point. Yet again despite the fact the girls have been made to feel that way due to sexist comments from boys, it's them who were forced to adapt by it, with their sports day being turned into just competing within lessons whilst the boys still had the day itself. Which also has the knock on effect of reinforcing that sport is primarily the preserve of boys and men, for them to have a specific day whilst girls have to do it in their sports lesson time to avoid being ogled and commented on.

acornandnuts I don't think it's too late to make that point at all. I think it's a really powerful point to make about how boys and girls are treated.

BayLeaves "the emphasis on competitive sports made me hate PE and it took me a decade after leaving school to realise it's not exercise I hate but competitive sports"

THIS! I finally found the sport I love and excel in in my late 40s: weightlifting. I am now 50 and lift more than any other woman in my gym, on a level with half the men (according to my trainer). And yet at school, I bunked off pretty much every PE lesson from the age of 13 onwards. I can handle exercise classes (namely yoga) but any sort of team sport STILL makes my blood curdle.

And I love the new This Girl Can advert: it's much better than the last one which seemed to be all about women worrying about what they looked like. This one is more about enjoying what your body can do. And that young woman putting in her shield and sniffing to the line "I'm not cute" - awesome, I could watch her do that all day :-)

That's a very good point. Yet again despite the fact the girls have been made to feel that way due to sexist comments from boys, it's them who were forced to adapt by it, with their sports day being turned into just competing within lessons whilst the boys still had the day itself

Although if the girls got a nice outing somewhere (for me, that would have been somewhere in the countryside, a gallery or museum) on the boys' sports day then I'd have seen that as a win (especially since I'd have made sure I wasn't competing in anything so got out of PE too). :)

I appreciate a number of children don't enjoy sport Spartacus but I don't think that's the issue here as even if that is the case for some it's still only happened because the boys have made sexist comments about girls playing sport during and afterwards, posting on social media about their bodies, so the girls have been made to feel uncomfortable and had to adapt because of how boys view them.

Good opportunity to teach DS about the privileges he enjoys and that the plural of anecdotes ("I know loads of sporty girls and inactive boys") is not data.

I completely agree YetAnotherSparacus. It is also extremely annoying to be told that no matter how loudly you say you had no interest in competitive sport it is really because you are conforming to gendered pressures.

I had a huge argument with a poster about that once. Oddly she couldn't explain why my husband was capable of making his own mind up about loathing sport but I had just succumbed to social pressure.