Innovative women's French national team video combats gender prejudice

There’s a new video, produced by women’s French national team partners Orange and Marcel, that will make you think again about women’s soccer.

It’s really at it’s most effective when you go in spoiler-free. So before any other description, take a look at the video for yourself:

Titled “Compil des Bleues”, the piece begins as what looks like a run of the mill highlight reel for the men’s French national team.

We’re shown about a minute of great goals and world class technique from the French. Then, the message “Only les Bleus (the men’s team) can give us these emotions. But that’s not them you’ve just seen.”

The video rewinds to the start, to reveal that what we’ve actually been watching is footage of the women’s national team.

We’re shown how, through various VFX techniques, the highlights of the women’s team were digitally altered to appear as if we were watching stars from the men’s side like Antoine Griezmann and Kylian Mbappé.

The video is wrapped with the tagline “At Orange, when we support les Bleus, we support les Bleues“. For the non-French speakers out there, the extra ‘e’ in “les Beues” denotes the nickname for the women’s national team.

A clever, and effective, campaign

If you first see the video without knowing what’s going to happen, it’s really a “whoa” moment. As soon as the reveal happens, it knocks you back in your seat a little bit. There’s the “oh man they got me!” perspective, sure. And the awe of the impressive technical feat to alter the footage. But the broader statement about the women’s game rings true.

This video makes you step back and simply consider the skills on display out on the pitch. To throw out any preconceived thoughts one might have about the gender of the players and quality of play.

Sadly, stereotypes regarding the quality of the women’s game still permeate soccer fandom in a big way. To an extent, it can infect the biggest supporters of women’s soccer. Even for people like myself, a NWSL season ticket holder, the idea that women’s soccer is different can nefariously burrow itself deep into your mind.

But things like this video help remind us that the beautiful game is equally as wonderful no matter who’s playing it. If it can help even just a handful of naysayers drop their misconceptions and give the women’s game a try, it’s a win.

Photo: Imago