Dear Bear
You are eight now. Eight years old, and magnificent (I know, I know, but you’re my girl, and I’m allowed to say that. And it’s totally true).
I love that you’re improbably kind to everyone and everything, and too funny for your own good, and smarter than anyone ever expects. I love that you always sing (usually the same song 633 times in a row, but hey, singing is singing). I love that you’re unshakeably confident, Captain Fearless.
And I love love love that with three older brothers to keep up with, you’re happily stamping out your own path to your own tune.
You play sports and ride a bike #LikeAGirl.
You have an infectious, uninhibited laugh which you shriek uproariously through the house #LikeAGirl.
You have an ‘eclectic’ sense of style (when we can get you out of PJ’s…), with a penchant for fluffy cat jumpers, ripped jeans and sturdy walking boots, which you strut proudly like every street’s a catwalk #LikeAGirl.
You swim underwater #LikeAGirl
You climb terrifyingly tall trees #LikeAGirl.
You love fairy lights and kittens, and stamping in mud and wrestling and abseiling and curling up with a good book… #LikeAGirl
Most of all I love that if anyone should have the temerity to tell you that you ‘catch like a girl’ then you smile sweetly and say ‘thank you!’.
Because you know that being a girl is awesome.
And probably thanks to having three big brothers, you also know that being a girl is sometimes different to being a boy – but never worse, and no better either.
I hope that we can always help you understand that no matter what life throws at you, always being YOU can only make it better.
Keep doing it #LikeAGirl, Bear. Because #LikeAGirl is an amazing way to be.
***
To celebrate International Women’s Day, Always has released a new video called “Always #LikeAGirl – Stronger Together” as part of its continuing mission to build girls’ confidence at puberty, and take a stand to make the phrase “like a girl” mean amazing things.
It features some of the amazing girls who responded to the first #LikeaGirl video – we’d love you to watch the video, and share it too. It can really make a difference! Let’s all join forces to make sure that girls everywhere keep their confidence through puberty and beyond by showing them that doing things #LikeAGirl is an awesome thing.
Using the phrase “like a girl” is an insult to any adolescent girl, and can be a tough blow to her confidence. Always started a conversation to help change all that with their #LikeAGirl social experiment and film. And millions of girls from around the world responded big time. In fact, many people shared their own videos and personal stories, and showed the world that doing things #LikeAGirl really is downright amazing.
More than 85 million people round the world saw the original Like a Girl video and it made an amazing impact. Before the Always campaign, only 19% of girls aged 16 to 24 had a positive association with the phrase “like a girl”.
But after watching the video, 76% of girls agreed they no longer considered the phrase “like a girl” to be insulting and two out of three men said they would think twice about using the phrase as an insult in future.
