This Girl Can Campaign Inspires 2.8M Women to Exercise Without Shaming Them
The This Girl Can campaign motivates women with positive reinforcement and encouragement, not shame. (Photo: Sport England)
On the first birthday of the This Girl Can campaign, a study revealing the effectiveness of the campaign has been released and the results are fantastic. The English government funded campaign was widely praised for advertisements depicting the reality of exercise (plenty of sweat and jiggling), and featuring a diverse group of women. The ads garnered over 37 million views on social media, won the inaugural Glass Lion prize at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival, and drew 540,000 women and girls to the This Girl Can online community. It all started when the English government’s Sport England discovered that a downward trend had formed among women partaking in exercise — nearly 750,000 fewer women were regularly active since summer 2012.
The campaign successfully reversed the downward trend in just a year and the results have exceeded expectations, inspiring millions to break a sweat. An annual Sport England study revealed that the ads have encouraged 2.8 million UK women between the ages of 14 and 40 to exercise more, and 1.6 million women to begin exercising for at least 30 minutes a week. “I’m very encouraged by these new figures, Sport England chief executive Jenny Price told Telegraph. “They show This Girl Can is not just being talked about, but is also changing behavior.” Price recognizes that this is just the beginning, though, acknowledging a significant gender gap of 1.73 million fewer active women than men. “We need to keep getting the message out there that women come in all shapes and sizes and levels of ability, and they should all feel able to exercise and play sports.”
England’s This Girl Can campaign has driven 2.8 million women to exercise. (Photo: Sport England)
The success of the campaign was likely due to the specific focus on smashing barriers that women have mentally built for themselves. The study that fueled the campaign revealed that much of the reason for women’s lack of participation in athletics involved body image issues, but that 75 percent of women wanted to be more active. “We looked very carefully at what women were saying about why they felt sport and exercise was not for them,” Price wrote in a statement about the campaign. “Some of the issues, like time and cost, were familiar but one of the strongest themes was fear of judgment.” Insecurities cited ranged from not being the right size to not being athletic enough. With slogans like “sweating like a pig, feeling like a fox” and “I kick balls, deal with it,” the ads reassure women that they don’t have to look perfect or perform the best to benefit from and enjoy exercise. The ads reached 110 countries, so let’s hope they have a similar effect around the world.
This Girl Can uplifts women rather than making them feel bad about themselves in order to encourage exercise. (Photo: Sport England)
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