These days, you don’t have to wander very far to notice the abundance of female-strengthening advertisements gracing print, screen & web. From Dove’s “True Beauty” to Pantene’s “Sorry Not Sorry” campaign, women’s praises are being sung higher than ever before. These ads have proved to bring the female population to a kind of catharsis ending in a thought that (hopefully) goes something like, “Hey, I should go buy that shampoo.” A few weeks back, I stumbled upon one that sent me into a thought process of my own. The campaign is called “like a girl” and, as you can imagine, was created to expose and then break down the barriers and negative connotations that come from using the phrase, “like a girl.”
Run like a girl.
Hit like a girl.
…write like a girl?
Is this depiction accurate? Being a female college student trying to break into the industry, I haven’t given much thought to how my gender could affect my success. As a copywriting intern, could my downfall be that I “write like a girl?”
I weighed this concept in relation to the time I’ve spent as a Camp Reality intern. The countless meetings, assignments and golden nuggets of information I’ve acquired along the way circulated my brain, and soon, I concluded this:
Yes. I write like a girl. And I must write like a girl.
And I must write like a guy. Not only that, but a younger guy in high school as well as an older man going for retirement. A mom in her late 20s and a CEO in her early 50s. I should write like anyone and everyone- something I’ve been able to see first-hand during Camp Reality. While the amount I’ve learned at Stone Ward is immeasurable, I think the most important thing I’ll take with me is that my mission isn’t to write something that only a twenty-something college student would find compelling (well, most of the time, anyway), but my work should draw in anyone and everyone.
As I enter my sixth week of Camp Reality, I am continuously inspired and reminded of the fact that I am capable of being anyone- and in turn speaking to everyone- all with the flick of a pen.
Now, that is a feeling of power worth advertising.