I saw Knives Out with family members on Boxing Day and was struck by one of the government ads that ran before the show.
It started like a pumped up motivational sports video with lots of young women athletes. I like those! Except about halfway through I started to think they were getting injured a lot. And then the message changed.
I wish we knew more about young women and concussions. I’m often struck by how much we worry about young men and football when women who play soccer also have a serious risk of traumatic brain injury. There’s also the concussions dangers in figure skating and cheerleading, because no helmets for aesthetics reasons.
Here’s the ad. What do you think?
We’ve written lots here about concussions.
See It’s concussion awareness day!
and Women and concussions: what do we know? Not nearly enough
and Not just football: more on sports and types of head injuries
and The Long Slow Walk (a.k.a. My Recovery from a Concussion) – Guest Post.
I saw this advertisement when we went to see Frozen II … my reaction went from “yay, women in sports, here is something that can inspire my daughter (who’s 4 years old, sitting beside me, and can’t read)” to “well, they’re getting hurt but getting back up and being resilient” to “woah, did not see that PSA coming but yeah, we need to think about that with women and sports too”. Meanwhile, my daughter is asking “where’s Elsa?”
I’m not sure how I really feel about it. It definitely caught my attention, I definitely remembered it the next day, and I don’t remember the other commercials that we had to watch before the movie began. Whether it will make an impact on women in sports, I don’t know. But at least we’re talking about it?