The task was to create a viral video and UBC sociology major Kirsten Toth is now definitely getting an ‘A’.
The 21-year-old was given the assignment of creating a video in her creative writing in new media class when she decided to choose a topic close to her heart.
Toth is a hockey player who plays defence for the UBC Thunderbirds team. Tired of being asked stupid questions about girls playing hockey, Toth decided to create a video around that subject.
Called ‘Stupid Questions Female Hockey Players Get Asked’, the video has now been viewed almost 100,000 times.
“Not only is it all over the news, but I’m getting an A so it’s exciting,” Toth said.
“I didn’t just want to make a meaningless video. I obviously play on the UBC hockey team and these are some challenges that we face on the daily. I’m aware that women have been preaching for equality in sport for some time, and I did my research and I know there’s not a lot of videos on the Internet that takes the approach that we took in our video,” she added.
“We wanted to do something that people couldn’t not laugh at. We wanted to make something people couldn’t oppose.”
Toth’s video highlights questions such as ‘do you wear pink gear?’, ‘do girls wear figure skates while playing hockey?’, and ‘you play hockey? But you’re so pretty!’.
“They are ridiculous,” Toth said of the questions. “The ones we get asked the most are the ones that are even more inappropriate so we couldn’t really put them in the video because we wanted to make the video appeal to all audiences.”
She says the response has been “awesome” but she is not surprised. “There’s been a need for something like this, a voice to be heard, and this video is the catalyst for change, I’m hoping.”
“All of a sudden people are interested in what we have to say, which is awesome. We want to make sure people get the point, the questions you ask are stupid.”
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