Love. This.


[Summary: Man's voice is heard chanting a cheerleading cheer; elderly woman peers out window and sees man cheering. The camera pulls back to reveal that he is cheering with his young daughter, who's dressed up like a cheerleader. A voiceover says: "Smallest moments can have the biggest impact on a child's life. Take time to be a dad today."]

I love this PSA from the White House's fatherhood initiative for all the reasons Tracey outlines here, most notably:
I thought this was a fantastic twist on the dad-playing-catch-with-son scenario we usually see to represent fathers' involvement with their kids. Even though this commercial might otherwise be criticized by showing a girl doing a very stereotypical "girl" activity like cheerleading, I actually prefer it this way over showing the dad and daughter doing something more stereotypically male, because the role reversal of the dad is much more subversive here than if the little girl had been playing, say, basketball with him.
Aside from being more subversive, it's also important to feature a "girl thing" because, irrespective of whether it's good or bad, the reality is that little girls frequently do stereotypically "girl" activities. In fact, I'll submit that girls in households including fathers with traditional ideas about gender are more likely to be involved in stereotypically "girl" activities, which those same traditional fathers are less likely to engage. So it's imperative to show fathers engaged with daughters doing "girl things," and encourage interaction on what is clearly their daughters' terms.

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