Let me start this out by saying that I believe a huge change needs to be made regarding the treatment of women who go through sexual trauma. However, hearing little girls who should be full of innocence using profanity to get the point across isn't going to change anything.
In case you missed it, there's a viral video (above) in which little girls are dropping the F-bomb like it's nothing and having terrible attitudes in general. "Shock advertising," they labeled it. But is it effective? Sure, in the video these girls do state alarming facts - one of them being that 1 in 5 women will be sexually abused in some way, and another regarding the fact that men in the same position as women are making more money - but the way these subjects are broached is all wrong.
The first big issue I saw with this is that they made sure to include that the girls were being sexually abused by a man. As sad, prevalent and horrific as sexual trauma is in the United States and all around the world, let's not forget that women have been sexual abusers, too.
There's no excuse for sexual abuse under any situation, but saying that men are the only ones capable of committing the crime is simply incorrect. Take one look at the sex offender registry for your area, and you'll see several women on it, too. What good is simply stating a fact that should be staring us in the face by now? Telling me that 1 in 5 women are sexually abused doesn't surprise me. I'm not ignorant, and I know what goes on in the world. Instead of just spitting out a statistic, why don't we talk about how to make it better? Why don't we discuss how to stop the stigma surrounding victims of sex crimes? Why don't we include hotlines for these women to get help?
After watching this video, I was also confused about why they would use little girls and profanity to discuss sexual abuse. Sexual abuse is generally associated with a loss of innocence, and with good reason. So why are we showing young girls, who shouldn't be using this kind of language or even knowing what these words mean yet? Isn't that a type of breach in innocence, too? These girls are far too young to understand that they're being used in a campaign, or what they're even doing this for. Using young girls for "shock value" just seems like using young girls to me.
Throughout the video, you can clearly see that blame for all the issues is placed on men. I thought feminism just meant believing in equality between the sexes. If that's so, why are the makers of this video so quick to place the blame on men for all that is happening? Should we, as young women, be taught to fear that all men will sexually abuse us and try to cheat us out of making as much as we should? That just doesn't seem healthy.
Do I think these issues need to be addressed? Absolutely. Do I think there needs to be a huge change taking place? 100%. Do I think using foul-mouthed young girls to spread the message is effective? Not at all. Why don't we just let children be children and leave them out of our agenda-filled advertisements from now on.
