I rode the lift with some random guy last week and we chatted the whole way up. Well, mostly he chatted while I listened. I was skiing into the maze at the bottom and the same guy pulled up behind me and exclaimed, “Wow … you ski really fast (insert mental drumroll) for a girl.”I swear, he see med genuinely surprised.I looked at him sideways and said, “Did you really just say that?” He looked a bit confused, like I just paid you a massive compliment!  So I added, “Why wouldn’t you just say, You ski really fast?”Did this random dude seriously think I needed a pat on the head for ripping? Was he truly oblivious to how patronizing his “kudos” came off? Maybe he deserved the benefit of the doubt. After all, he could’ve just time-traveled from 1952.Actually, maybe he did. Have you seen TikTok lately? Half the internet is devoted to #tradwife women baking sourdough in prairie dresses, teaching us how to “submit” to our husbands. Did I miss a memo? Nothing against homemade bread, but are we beta-testing “The Stepford Wives” 2.0? Because last I checked, women had long ago earned the right to be fast, strong and invincible — on the slopes and everywhere else.Geez Louise. How many Lindsey Vonns, Mikaela Schiffrins, Ingrid Backstroms and Madison Ostergrens does it take to change a mindset?I mean, are we really still having this conversation?One of my long-time advertising clients is cycling pioneer and Bicycling Hall of Fame inductee Georgena Terry — the first person to market bikes specifically to women. Before founding Terry Precision Cycling back in the late ’70s, she worked as an engineer at Xerox.Back then, there was no women’s cycling industry, let alone women-specific bikes. Women wore men’s jerseys, rode men’s bikes and adapted as best as they could.Georgena, a lifelong cyclist with a petite frame, knew first hand women needed bikes that fit them — so she taught herself to how to build one. With a blowtorch and some books, she welded her first steel bike frame in her basement.When she finally brought the prototype to a bike dealer in the early ’80s, he rolled his eyes. “No woman will ever spend $600 on a bike,” he scoffed.Georgena thought to herself, “Oh, I’m going to make you eat your words.”Flash forward to the early 2000s, when Terry Bicycles achieved double-digit sales growth, sponsored its first pro-racing women’s team and Georgena was named one of 11 cyling innovators by Outside Magazine — the only woman recognized.This is exactly the kind of grit mavericks like Georgena have always had to bring — not just to participate but to reinvent the game entirely. Not bad … for a girl.I bought my first Terry bike around 2001, when I joined a women’s cycling club in Rochester, New York. A friend who worked at Terry helped design a cycling jersey and a women’s saddle emblazoned with the words Ride Like a Girl. It was the perfect flip-the-script response to decades of dismissal.This reminds me of one of my all-time favorite Nike campaigns about the power of  sports. In one of the ads, a young girl sits on a bench with a baseball mitt, and the copy reads:There were boys, and there were girls and they were them and we were, well, we weren’t them, and we knew there must be a difference … (you run like a girl, you throw like a girl, you girl you). … And if you could have been a boy, what difference would it have made? Would it have made you faster, cuter, cleaner?The ad closes with:One day, when you’re out in the world running, feet flying, dogs barking, smiles grinning, you’ll hear those immortal words calling inside your head, “Oh, you run like a girl,” and you will say, shout, scream, whisper, call back: Yes. What exactly did you think I was?The campaign itself was written in the mid-’90s by copywriter Janet Champ — who at the time was the agency receptionist. The mostly male creative department was struggling with ads for Nike Women. In a “Mad Men”-worthy twist, Champ asked if she could take a stab at it. The game-changing campaign she created is among the most memorable and lauded of all time — and is even included in a collection at the Smithsonian. Nice work, for a girl.So bro, word to the wise: Next time you’re skiing with me and my friends, don’t be surprised if we rip right past you. Yeah, we ski like girls. Try to keep up.The post Betty Diaries: Ski like a girl, if you can keep up appeared first on Park Record. ...read more read less