When Elizabeth Warren ran for Senate in 2011, she met a lot of young girls on the campaign trail. She didn’t concern herself with their appearance. Instead, she would deploy a practiced move designed to inspire, she explained to the audience at a CNN town hall in April. “My name is Elizabeth,” she would say. “And I’m running for senator because that’s what girls do.” Then she would extend her pinky and they’d swear on it. She went on to become the first woman elected senator in Massachusetts. And now that she is campaigning for the 2020 Democratic nomination, a bid to become the first woman elected president, she’s still using the pinky swear move — swapping president for senator, of course.

Mark Makela via Getty Images Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) on May 13, 2019.

Contrast that with how fellow 2020 hopeful Joe Biden sometimes talks to younggirls on the campaign trail. It’s perhaps more immediate and revealing than any policy paper. The former vice president was introduced to a voter’s granddaughter at a coffee shop in Iowa on Wednesday. He asked her age — 13 years old — and then turned to her brothers. “You’ve got one job here, keep the guys away from your sister,” he said, according to a tweet from a reporter at the Boston Globe.

Biden talks to girls and brings in their looks. Warren talks to girls and brings up their potential. Progressive Democratic consultant Rebecca Katz

It’s unclear if he said anything else to the girl. A representative from Biden’s campaign declined to comment. Biden’s remark was not necessarily a stereotypical Biden gaffe. It is the kind of offhand thing that a lot of adults like to say about their daughters, or grandchildren, or any young girl, really — expressing the fear that soon enough they’ll grow into attractive women and be forced to fend off lecherous boys and men. Warren’s pinky swear is far more deliberate. “Biden talks to girls and brings in their looks,” said Rebecca Katz, a progressive Democratic consultant. “Warren talks to girls and brings up their potential.” Sens. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), also contending for the nomination, have also shown that they understand the power of the message they’re sending to young women. “Girls can do anything,” is the title of a Gillibrand ad. “I’m really excited we’re going to have a female president,” says one of the girls in the video. Peter Sagal, host of NPR’s “Wait Wait... Don’t Tell Me!”, on Twitter recalled a time when Biden told Sagal’s daughters, “No dating until you’re 30.” It’s a standard joke of his, Sagal wrote. “Whether it’s a good joke, of course, is another question.” It’s more than a joke, though. Remarks like these are meant to be protective. They’re probably even well-intentioned or often tossed off without much thought. To girls, they send a more complicated message. In an instant, they’re turned from person to object. Ask any woman, and you’ll find she was once a little girl made uncomfortable by some adult talking about how she would grow up one day to be a “heartbreaker.” Biden’s comment is a sad reminder that in a world stocked with “girl power” T-shirts, young women are still getting the message that their power is limited, and that they’re going to need a man for protection. While Biden is perhaps unwittingly sending a confusing message to young girls — one that these girls might not even themselves be conscious of — Warren has, well, more of a plan. She came up with that pinky swear move on the trail back in 2011 in response to the blowback she was getting as a female candidate, she said on CNN. Warren was told that Massachusetts wasn’t ready for a female senator and notes that the early coverage of her campaign focused a lot on her appearance. “It’s about my hair. It’s about my voice. It’s about whether or not I smile enough,” she said, adding: “I didn’t.” Looking at girls and women as potential victims is, of course, part of Biden’s policy history. His signature legislative win is the Violence Against Women Act. And women’s groups have lauded him, mostly, for the legislation. Biden has had some real problems with how he interacts with women, but he is hardly a Donald Trump, a man accused of sexual assault and harassment with a long track record of misogynistic comments.

Scott Olson via Getty Images Democratic presidential candidate and former vice president Joe Biden speaks to diners at the Tasty Cafe during a quick campaign stop on June 12, 2019, in Eldridge, Iowa.