What a depressingly predictable scenario.
England’s brave, battling “Lionesses” (in itself arguably a bit derogatory but let’s not dwell on that) fly home to great acclaim across the football supporters in the country, men and women alike, inspiring a generation of girls to pull their boots on and of boys to stop making disparaging comments to be greeted by this…
The tweeted equivalent of a pat on the head and “nice try love, now put the kettle on and we can get on with life as normal again.”
“..go back to being mothers, partners and daughters today, but they have taken on another title – heroes.”
Er..nice try. Problem is…you’ve put heroes as the after thought and focused on the stereotypes first. This isn’t helpful FA.
Cue outcry on social media and a whole load of great work undone in one hastily typed tweet. I assume it was hasty. I’m not excusing it but that cannot have been through any sort of vetting procedure.
The message is clearly still in the tweeter’s head (problem to be dealt with internally) but it would have never seen the light of day.
One hopes!
Here’s a quick tip on social media…engage brain before tweeting. Take my headline here…controversial? Yes. What I would say if you met me? Yes. Says what I think? Yes.
Tick to tweet.
The main lesson to be learned here, other than that of casual sexism in the workplace, is that campaigns should be integrated and thought through across all mediums. That tweet should never have been off the cuff in the first place. In a campaign as huge as this, every eventuality should have been explored, cross-checked and approved. Then tweeted.
Sure, it lacks originality but look what happened without these checks in place.
Hopefully this doesn’t demolish so much of the good work of the last month by all of the parties concerned. In fact, the outcry might even highlight the brilliance of this performance. Time will tell.
#WeCanPlay – is hopefully the message that gets remembered, not the patronising tweet that emerged from a cocoon in the 1970s’.