This Girl Can campaign by Sports England

This Girl Can

Hey Sweeties,

Call me late to the party for waiting until now to mention it (that’s blog scheduling for you!) but how great is the This Girl Can campaign by Sport England?

For those who haven’t seen it, here’s the advert currently crossing the air waves.

 

The most hilarious thing I have heard (on the radio) about this campaign is that this advert is sexist. SEXIST?! How on earth is this campaign sexist? It shows real women getting out there and doing their thing; it’s nothing other than fantastic. If this campaign used skinny framed, big boobed, highly attractive women in full makeup then you might have an argument. But it doesn’t. End of.

Through these Sunday Chat posts, I have spoken about confidence and about the benefits of doing something new amongst other things and I feel that the This Girl Can campaign is only but adding to this group of posts as well as the messages and advice I myself am trying to pass on to you, Sweeties.

(For a bit of context) Sport England following research, identified that there are 2 million fewer women than men doing sport/keeping active for fear of well… essentially not looking their best in front of others and feeling a bit self conscious which is crazy but as a woman who does exercise and keeps active, I can totally relate! Last spring/summer, I started going out for runs/jogs in the evenings  and where Ian and I used to live, I could do a really good circuit that took me round the back of the village; it was beautiful, scenic but more importantly, I could exercise away from the glare of others, it was private and I was alone.

As you all know I play hockey and this involves training once a week with a mixed group of people (men and women) and then a match at the weekends. I don’t worry about wearing no makeup as aside from the unattractiveness of makeup running down your face when you get hot and sweaty, mascara in your eyes owing to said sweating, stings like hell! My ‘fear’ is actually not performing well in front of others. I am better in matches because the adrenaline of the game takes over and you haven’t got time to think about anything except for the game at hand but in training, when it’s perfectly acceptable to make mistakes… that’s when I worry. Truth is, I don’t enjoy the games… well that’s a lie, I do enjoy the games and I love the training sessions, I just do a fantastic job of psyching myself out of them until the hour before. It’s ridiculous but at the moment I am just going through a stage of having an incredible lack of confidence in my abilities. I am also still finding my place within a new group of people and that’s always a factor with these things.

But every woman is different and ‘the fear’ that the campaign is trying to both raise and tackle will be different for everyone. Some may love gyms and don’t worry about sweating, but the thought of exercising alone is unthinkable and vice versa. For me, the thought of never playing hockey again fills me with dread so I put my confidence issues aside and just go for it and I think everyone reading this should do too!

Until next time x

PS.

30.01.2015: I have nothing against Company Magazine as I am sure they mean well but this kind of content from women’s publications drives me mad! It also goes almost completely against the above campaign! Working out is not about looking good while doing it; it’s ok to sweat and look a mess! I love their point regarding wearing waterproof mascara on the off chance you catch the attention of the Personal Trainer… because that is of course why women go to the gym. Man alive!

Company Magazine

Yes I commented back to them…!

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