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I'm McKenna Pope. I'm 14 years old.

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And when I was 13, I convinced

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one of the largest toy companies,

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toymakers, in the world, Hasbro,

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to change the way that they marketed

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one of their most best-selling products.

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So allow me to tell you about it.

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So I have a brother, Gavin.

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When this whole shebang happened, he was four.

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He loved to cook.

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He was always getting ingredients out of the fridge

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and mixing them into these, needless to say,

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uneatable concoctions,

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or making invisible macaroni and cheese.

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He wanted to be a chef really badly.

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And so what better gift for a kid
who wanted to be a chef

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than an Easy Bake oven. Right?

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I mean, we all had those when we were little.

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And he wanted one so badly.

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But then he started to realize something.

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In the commercials, and on the boxes,

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for the Easy Bake ovens,

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Hasbro marketed them specifically to girls.

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And the way that they did this

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was they would only feature girls
on the boxes or in the commercials,

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and there would be flowery prints all over the ovens

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and it would be in bright pink and purple,

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very gender-specific colors to females, right?

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So it kind of was sending a message

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that only girls are supposed to cook, boys aren't.

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And this discouraged my brother a lot.

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He thought that he wasn't
supposed to want to be a chef,

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because that was something that girls did.

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Girls cooked, boys didn't,

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or so the message that Hasbro was sending.

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And this got me thinking,

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God, I wish there was a way that I could change this,

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that could I have my voice heard by Hasbro

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so I could ask them and tell them

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what they were doing wrong

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and ask them to change it.

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And that got me thinking about a website

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that I had learned about a few months prior

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called change.org.

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Change.org is an online petition-sharing platform

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where you can create a petition and share it

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across all of these social media networks,

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through Facebook, through Twitter,

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through YouTube, through Reddit, through Tumblr,

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through whatever you could think of.

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And so I created a petition

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along with the YouTube video
that I added to the petition

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basically asking Hasbro

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to change the way that they marketed it

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and featuring boys in the commercials, on the boxes,

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and most of all creating them

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in less gender-specific colors.

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So this petition started to take off,

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like, humongously fast, you have no idea.

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I was getting interviewed by
all these national news outlets

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and press outlets, and it was amazing.

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In three weeks, maybe three and a half,

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I had 46,000 signatures on this petition.

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(Applause)

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Thank you.

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So, needless to say, it was crazy.

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Eventually, Hasbro themselves
invited me to their headquarters

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so they could go and unveil

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their new Easy Bake oven product to me,

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in black, silver, and blue.

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It was literally one of the best moments of my life.

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It was like Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.

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That thing was amazing.

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What I didn't realize at the time, however,

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was that I had become an activist.

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I could change something that,

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even as a kid, or maybe even especially as a kid,

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my voice mattered, and your voice matters too.

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I want to let you know it's not going to be easy,

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and it wasn't easy for me,

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because I faced a lot of obstacles.

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People online, and sometimes even in real life,

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were disrespectful to me and my family,

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and talked about how the whole
thing was a waste of time,

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and it really discouraged me.

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And actually, I have some examples,

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because what's better revenge

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than displaying their idiocy.

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So let's see.

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From username liquidsore29

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—interesting usernames we have here—

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"disgusting liberal moms making their sons gay."

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Liquidsore29, really? Really? Okay.

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How about from whiteboy77ags:

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"people always need something
to [female dog] about."

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From jeffreygutierrez:

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"omg shut up you just want money and attention."

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So it was comments like these

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that really discouraged me from
wanting to make change in the future

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because I thought people don't care,

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people think it's a waste of time,

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and people are going to be disrespectful to me

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and my family.

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It hurt me, and it made me think,

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what's the point of making change in the future?

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But then I started to realize something.

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Haters gonna hate.

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Come on, say it with me, one, two, three:

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haters gonna hate.

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So let your haters hate,

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you know what, and make your change,

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because I know you can.

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I look out into this crowd,

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and I see 400 people

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who came out because they wanted to know

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how they could make a change,

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and I know that you can, and all
of you watching at home can too

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because you have so much that you can do

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and that you believe in,

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and you can trade it across all these social media,

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through Facebook, through Twitter,

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through YouTube, through Reddit, through Tumblr,

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through whatever else you can think of.

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And you can make that change.

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You can take what you believe in

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and turn it into a cause and change it.

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And that spark that you've been hearing about

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all day today,

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you can use that spark that you have within you

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and turn it into a fire.

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Thank you.

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(Applause)