As Hillary Clinton prepared this week to become the first woman in U.S. history to be nominated for president by a major political party, her campaign reposted a video ad on Twitter originally produced by the Hillary for President campaign late in 2015. The ad, titled “44 boys is too many”, features young girls reading letters they had written to the former first lady encouraging her in her run for president. The title comes from one of the girl’s letters featured in the ad. “Forty-four boys” refers to the number of presidents so far, all male, up to and including Barack Obama.
The tweet accompanying the ad quotes from another girl’s letter and reads, “It is ridiculous that there has never been a female president before.” As this letter is displayed on the screen, however, additional lines from the letter are visible. The young letter writer goes on to say, “Girls are smarter than [boys]” and “Girls, rule, boys, drool”. A screenshot of the letter from the video is below:
The letter-writers also mention that it will be “hard to be a grandmother and president”, that Clinton should “encourage people to help and save the earth”, and that Clinton should be elected because “from George Washington to Barack Obama there has not been a woman president.” (Barack Obama defeated Clinton in her first run for the Democratic nomination in 2008.)
The Clinton campaign did not respond to an inquiry about the use in the ad of the phrase “boys drool” or how little boys might be affected by this.
The ad can be seen in its entirety below:
