Wednesday, October 7, 2009

Help Name this Campaign!

Calling All Girls...We Need Your Vote

Hardy Girls is working with sister organizations across the U.S. and Canada on a full-scale, girl driven campaign to change media’s representation of girls. We want you to have the information, power, and support it takes to demand more real girls with real lives, real interests, and real bodies in media and fewer mean girl, pole-dancing, shopaholic fashionistas. This will be a fun, edgy, creative campaign that connects you with other girls across a variety of platforms, including social networking sites like Facebook, YouTube, MySpace, and Twitter.

So if you want to speak your mind and strut your stuff, if you want to join with other girls and start a new girl movement, help us NAME THIS CAMPAIGN!

Tell us which name you like best on the poll to the right. If you have a better suggestion, email us at lyn@hghw.org. If we choose your original name over one of ours listed below, we’ll send you a $100 iTunes gift card.


So, drum roll please...?

Here they are!

  1. Get Real! A Campaign for All Girls
  2. ROAR (Reclaim Girlhood; Organize; Assert Ourselves; Rescue Media)
  3. G-WAVE (Girls With Active Voices Everywhere)
  4. Girl Up! (as in Be Strong, Stand up, Speak up)
  5. PBG (Powered By Girls)
  6. That's What She Says (Turning a joke that makes girls sexual objects into a chance for real girls to talk back and making it an active statement of girls' voices!)
  7. DissTheMessage
So, after some feedback from our friends and allies, we've restarted the poll and changed #6 from "That's What She Said" to "That's What She Says" It's an important difference to us and to the girls we're working with on this Campaign! We tallied up all the votes we received so far and will add those to the results from the new poll.

Vote Now! And tell your friends by emailing, sharing through Facebook and Twitter, and good old-fashioned word-of-mouth!!

THANKS!

11 comments:

stuff said...

help me understand; you want to change media's representation of girls by using a phrase (choice 6 - that's what she said) which itself is used to call out sexually explicit double entendres. what is the message being sent there?

Lyn Mikel Brown said...

Hi Francesca,

We’re trying to take back that awful phrase in a clever way—to reclaim it to be about girls talking back to stereotypes and objectified views of girls and women. We want to use "that's what she said" to show people how girls can speak up in ways that are smart and unexpected and not sexualized. By using it in the context of this media literacy campaign, we’re saying it doesn’t and shouldn’t mean what it’s come to mean, and that girls get to speak for themselves.

Thanks for the feedback! We've added a clarification to explain how we want to use it!

Lyn

stuff said...

i feel it would be more empowering to teach and give tools to combat offensive terms then to use a phrase that will always resonate with crudeness and disrespect.

there is no way to "take back" the phrase "that's what she said" since it originated as an insult. an innocent connotation never existed to return to.

Lyn Mikel Brown said...

The innocent phrase would simply be, literally, “that’s what she said” without any offensive overlay. As you can see, we put up a qualifying explanation beside this choice thanks to your email — sincerely, thanks for that!

We’re tired of the way girls are used in the way this punchline uses them and one way to fight it is to flood the media with positive things girl say. Stay tuned. We are on the same page here, fighting for the same thing, and we won’t sell out girls to get there. If this works against our overall goal, we’ll drop it! But we want to hear from girls to know what they can get behind.

Unknown said...

I would have to agree with francesca, that it would be more empowering to use something else. There will always be people hearing "that's what she said" and turning it into innuendo. After all, that was the original intent of the joke. Maybe the phrase could be used here and there in a different way, but as a name for a girls' empowerment project it would be the subject of ridicule and "backlash" more. (Maybe quote famous strong women with a "THAT'S what SHE said!" at the end...)

Barbasaurus said...

I like "Girl up!"

What about "Be." As in, Be yourself, Be comfortable, Be powerful, Be honest, Be quiet, Be loud, Be curious, Be silly... Be you. Part of the campaign could be to incorporate those different phrases.

I love what you're doing! Thanks for "Be"ing awesome!

ajstarr8 said...

Thanks for the feedback everyone. We also heard from a girl who liked "That's what she said" but thought, too, that it would be hard to reclaim this phrase. She suggested "That's what she says" which hints at and plays with the joke phrase but takes a present tense stance, claiming girls' voices. I like it. What do you all think?

I also like "Be"...simple, present, zen like even.

Unknown said...

I have a few ideas

Girl Power: Not just a myth.

Stay True, Stay Strong, Stay You.

GRAMS: Girls Rising Above the Media's Stereotypes

Dawney D said...

I like that what she said or thats what she says. It is a phrase that is relevant for this time period. This is a phrase unlike the N word which did not emerge with a negative connotation. Before this year that's what she said meant simply that's what she said. The woman's voice is powerful, so lets hear what she has to say.

Pigtail Pals Melissa Wardy said...

What a great campaign! Pigtail Pals is your ally in Redefining Girly, so let us know what we can do to spread the word for you!

We love "Girl Up!". It suggests strength, action, and a play on the terms "Man Up" or "Ante Up".

Also "Girl Up" is short, so it would be easy to tweet, text, etc...

Best of luck, please let Pigtail Pals know what we can do to help with this endeavor. Whatever you need!

Melissa Wardy

Unknown said...

how about "now, THAT's what she said", or something that reiterates the fact that we are re-claiming this phrase. emphasize the connection in hopes that people will use it when a girl says something empowering.