This Girl Can campaign celebrates active women
Published 12 January 2015
This Girl Can is a celebration of active women doing their thing – no matter how they do it, how they look or even how sweaty they get.
It’s a national campaign developed by Sport England along with a wide range of partners, to inspire more women and girls to wiggle, jiggle, move and prove that they can overcome any barrier to getting active.
Sport England looked into lots of research and found that 2 million fewer women are regularly participating in sport or exercise than men – despite 75% of women aged 14 to 40 saying they’d like to do more. After carrying out their own research with lots of ordinary women, they identified that fear of judgement is the main barrier to getting involved and doing more.
Worrying about what others think is stopping many of us from taking part in exercise. But as thousands of women up and down the country are proving, it really doesn’t have to.
Sport England realised that typical role models like Jessica Ennis or Victoria Pendleton might not be the best way to encourage normal women to get active, because their physiques and fitness levels are seen as completely unachievable.
Instead, the This Girl Can campaign took to the ground to ‘streetcast’ ordinary women. The seven chosen are aged between 14 and 51, and will become a new type of ambassador for women in sport, as well as the faces of This Girl Can.
They feature in the adverts with no airbrushing or flattering editing, and images of them in action will be seen on billboards around the country complete with quotes they’ve actually said, not ones made up by a PR company. ‘Sweating like a pig, feeling like a fox’ and ‘I’m slow, but I’m lapping everyone on the couch’ are two examples.
A series of videos have been created to support the campaign, featuring the awesome women who are getting out there, doing their thing, their way. One such woman is cyclist Grace Monksfield Hammond. Grace likes to be outside riding through the fresh air. She’s not racing anyone, she’s not worrying about how fast she’s going. She’s just doing it, and that’s all that matters.
Grace vs Pace
Visit thisgirlcan.co.uk for information about the campaign and details about different types of sport to get involved with.
Join the conversation on Twitter with the hashtag #thisgirlcan and follow the campaign on Facebook and YouTube.
Better still, find a bike ride and join us by clicking ‘find a ride’ above.
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