HGHW to WalMart - Can You Stoop Any Lower?

We found this on feministing.com. You can find it at your neighborhood Wal-Mart.

Sold in junior sizes at your local Wal-Mart - makes us wonder if Wal-Mart can stoop any lower or be more perverse?

Send a letter to:
Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.
Attn: Customer Service
702 S.W. 8th Street
Bentonville, AR 72716

Or call:
1-800-WALMART

Pink Weightloss Patch - Keep Your Girlish Figure

Get Skinny.

"You should NOT spend your girlish days worrying about your weight. But you want to be skinny and wear all those cute little dresses - so we have come up with a simple solution for you."

"Use the Pink Patch daily for 24/7 weight loss and appetite control so you can look fabulous while you have fun. No more worries about the freshman 15 or sitting at your new desk job snacking all day long. You have enough to focus on besides your weight. Look in the mirror and smile — without giving up your busy social life! The Pink Patch will help you get skinny: we guarantee it."

This is one of the most obvious marketing ploys targeting girls' anxieties around weight. I found this product advertisement on MySpace, where loads of teenage girls spend their free time. When I clicked the link I was appalled that this company was so blatantly marketing to girls.

Their tagline is: "Be young & have fun with the body you always dreamed of." Just the fact that it's a PINK patch reminds me of the Victoria's Secret Pink Campaign - where they lure girls into the lingerie stores full of padded bras and thongs and give them a pink teddy bear if they make a purchase.

Pegged as "FAST, FRESH, and FREE-SPIRITED", this marketing scheme reinforces Packaging Girlhood authors Brown and Lamb's claim that marketers are co-opting girl power and words like freedom and independence to mean the power to shop and the freedom to look great.

If you're as angry as we are - send a letter to the company:
USA Herbals
500 Bic Drive
Bldg #4 Ground Floor
Milford, CT 06461

Or call:
1-866-468-3300
Monday - Friday
8 AM - 6 PM EST

Beauty Comes in all Shapes and Sizes

Yesterday I read an article that struck a personal chord. It is called Learning self-limiting attitudes about achievement (http://tdru.blogspot.com/2007/11/week-of-november-19.html). The part of the article that really hit home discussed the influence that parents and adults have in teaching their daughters appropriate gender performance (as if there is such a thing) and self-esteem.

This past thanksgiving I took a long-awaited trip to New York City to visit my family and enjoy the holiday. I have two younger sisters- Mia who is 8 years old and India who is 5. After a 7 hour drive I arrive at my mom’s house. As soon as my mama opens the door, I step inside and her tea cup Chihuahua begins yelping and jumping excitedly. Then I hear a small tired voice by the stairs to the second floor say “hi catherine.” I look over to see this beautiful round girl half my size with long twists in her hair. “MIA!!!” I scream. She ran over to me and wrapped her arms around my body squeezing so tight that I was actually surprised by her strength. Next, India comes running down the stairs, “Catherine’s home!” A petite little body with a round head and big wondrous eyes came and grabbed onto the other side of me, holding tight. It was one of those special moments that you never forget. When I saw Mia I remember thinking, wow, she has gotten thicker. As the weekend progressed my mama told me about the family and how everyone was doing. She told me that Mia had been saying, “I hate my body, I’m too fat.” She actually went as far as to say, “Mommy, I’m hideous.” My mom asked me to talk to her and try to make her feel better about herself. I instantly thought of Hardy Girls and our workshops about media. I thought, “I will do some media literacy… starting with the Disney princesses,” which are readily available pictures in my sister’s Ikea designed kiddy bedroom.

I told Mia that we were going to have special sister time since she was such a big girl now. I told her that I used to hate my body and then I learned where it was coming from. I learned that all these images of unattainable beauty are strategically placed around us to sell us products- makeup, lotions, shoes, clothes, bags, hair products, you name it. The images that accompany the ads sell 2 things- a mainstream popular idea of beauty and the product itself. She caught on right away, saying “Yeah, and Beyonce always wears a lot of makeup.” I then asked her about the Disney princesses, what did she see and how did the images make her feel. She said that they were white and skinny with long hair and dresses. She said, “Some people are ugly and some are pretty. The pretty ones look like that (the Disney princesses) and the ugly ones look like me (referring to her race and her weight). My heart hurt so badly for her. I said “Mia, Are these real women?” She paused for a minute looking off, then she said “NO”. I pined in, “These are drawings aren’t they? Someone created these images!” She started to join in, “Yeah, they aren’t real” all the while getting somewhat angry at the fact that she had been conned into hating herself based on a drawing. We went further and further into the conversation about different kinds of beauty, about magazines, the kids that tease her in school and about loving herself. I told that loving yourself is a choice you make everyday. Your idea of your own beauty should not be based on a magazine picture because they aren’t real images. They are retouched, bodies are redrawn, and makeup is repainted. Every ad is selling something and in order to make you buy a particular product they have to make you feel bad about yourself… like somehow you are not whole without this thing. Sadly though, the products themselves and the image of beauty are becoming one. It used to be that they used so called beautiful people to sell the ads; now, the beautiful people have become the ads. The product became Botox, breast augmentation, tummy tucks, and so on. Now the product is your own body and the media wants to sell you a new one. This conversation gets very sticky for me though because our mother has had plastic surgery. She is trying to stay “beautiful” (if that is something that can ever be lost) by looking young.

At the end of the talk, Mia and I made a poster that attaches to the family mirror. It says, “I am beautiful.” I told her when she forgets what beauty is, or begins to feel bad about herself… look in the mirror and read the sign to remind her. The media limits the definition of beauty with their images and so our own real images, our real reflections need to be our new personal media expanding the definition of beauty. Just as we are smiling, making the posters and feeling good about our bodies… my mother comes downstairs to model her outfit as she was getting ready to go out with a friend. She stands in the doorway… squeezes 2cm of the skin on her waist and says “Do I look fat in this?” I was so upset. Mia hadn’t really noticed (at least not consciously) and I signal to mom with my chopping hand shaped like a knife on my neck, and speak through quiet gritted teeth “Mom, that is part of the problem.”

We take for granted how many young girls mimic our actions and statements. Sometimes I fear what my sisters learned from me when they were younger before I left for college. In what ways did I teach them to hate themselves simply by stating that I hated myself? Now, after college and a ton of growth, I live 7 hours away from my sisters and I have learned to love myself, to embrace life, and to not let someone else’s definition of beauty define me. I am no longer there on a regular basis to be that influence, and so it is my challenge to live it; to be the living example of empowerment and strength for any girl that I may meet. This is my charge to you… LOVE YOURSELF for all that you are so that younger girls will grow up KNOWING that beauty comes in all shapes and sizes.

Dangerous Books for Girls

Excerpted from Lyn Mikel Brown's article on Dangerous Books for Girls. The full article can be found to the right. Please share your comments!

Feminist psychologists have amassed ample evidence that conventional femininity is bad for girls--all girls. Using their Feminine Ideology Scale, for example, Deborah Tolman and her colleagues find that internalizing conventional femininity ideologies of the very passive and disembodied "nature" that the Matthews teachers., with all good intentions, desire and instruct is associated with poor mental health for early adolescent girls. Girls who uncritically internalize these messages are more likely to be depressed and to have lower self-esteem.

Enter two popular books, Wendy Shalit's Girls Gone Mild and Louann Brizendine's The Female Brain, to tell us just what proper means and why we should accept, even celebrate it. Shalit champions a purported new girl movement away from sexy and toward "traditional family values", while Brizendine tries to establish a causal link between brain and gender differences. While they appear to have little in common, these books share a similar set of assumptions about the intrinsic worth and the salvation of conventional femininity.

Read the full article

The Super Girl Dilemma

Excerpted from Lyn Mikel Brown's article on the SuperGirl Dilemma. The full article can be found to the right. Please share your comments!

In the early 90’s, when Carol Gilligan and I wrote about the tyranny of nice and kind and the pressure girls felt to be perfect, we were illuminating the ways conventional femininity worked to shape girls’ desires and relationships. Listening to educationally privileged girls, mostly white and middle class, we found that all too often the girls who excelled in school, who looked put-together, who sang in school choirs, volunteered in their communities, and smiled a lot were in various kinds of psychological trouble. A few stalwart resisters—some white and middle class, but mostly working class girls and girls of color--suggested this did not have to be the developmental trajectory, but for the girls who bought the ideal, it didn’t feel like a choice.

Read the full article

Happy Halloween from Hardy Girls

Halloween used to be about wearing the scariest outfit, but these days, at least for girls, it's about wearing the sexiest outfit. Parents should be concerned about the lack of options out there for girls. That's why Packaging Girlhood authors Lyn Mikel Brown and Sharon Lamb have put these 12 tips together:

"Halloween is all about being what you aren't ... help her stretch her imagination ... Then introduce her to female police officers and firefighters in your community. Halloween is a day of imagination -- a perfect opportunity to show her that she can be anyone, any profession, any role."

1. On a day when she can be anyone or anything, princesses and Divas should not be her only Halloween choices! It's not that pink and pretty is bad, but it squeezes out other possibilities. Girls love it, yes, but they also love double fudge-frosted brownies, and you wouldn.t want them eating a steady diet of that stuff.

2. Be creative with your daughter's costumes. Imagination can help girls break out of gender stereotypes and fantasy is a great practice for reality.

3. Encourage your daughter to be anyone or anything. If they are encouraged to look around them, they will see women doing wild, brave and phenomenal things. (Astronaut is NOT a boy costume!) This will give them permission to be wild, brave and phenomenal too!

4. Don't assume that you know what your daughter likes. She is bombarded with pink princesses, sexy divas and pop stars, but she may surprise you! Talk about possibilities. If she chooses pink and glittery, encourage her to add her own twist to her costume. If she wants to be a queen, let her carry a sheath and sword in case she needs to fight for her crown!

5. Spend time with her and listen to what she likes and why. Sitting down and talking about Halloween costumes is a great learning and bonding experience. Help her to recall the best costumes she saw last year. Remember when those three girls who were best friends dressed as the Three Musketeers? And it's also a great opportunity to open the door to new possibilities.

6. Sit down with a paper and pencil and let your daughter create her own character and story. She can raid the family closets or dress up box to become the wildest character she can think of!

Picking a Costume...A Chance to Be Anything and Everything!

7. If your daughter is set on pink and glittery, let her pink and glitter DO something. Help her imagine a feisty fairy who can take on the magical realm's evil dragon or let her be a butterfly that saves the insect world or even a princess who can use a map to find her own way to the ball! She can be a pink superhero who saves the universe or a sparkly firefighter or even a
sparkly skeleton!

8. If your daughter loves scary stories and the history of Halloween let her go traditional and be a witch, a monster, or ghost. If she.s a witch, avoid all those sexy diva witch costumes in the catalogs; instead, encourage her to look as scary, ugly, and awful as she can.

9. Does your daughter have a favorite book? A favorite character? Reread the book with her and think about what she.ll need to get into character. She can be Madeline, Anne of Green Gables, Dorothy of OZ or Hermione Granger. She can even be the scarecrow or the Wicked Witch of the West, or even the wizard Dumbledore. Tell her she doesn't need to limit herself to the girl leads in each of these!

10. There is no reason she can't be a character usually reserved for boys! Halloween is all about being what you aren't let her stretch her imagination to become a vampire, ghoul, or cowpoke. Teach her that just because the police officer and firefighter costumes are labeled for boys does not mean they are off limits to her. There are plenty of female police officers and fire fighters in real life!

11. Is your daughter an athlete? This is her chance to become her idol off the court, field or racetrack. She can be Mia Hamm, Danica Patrick or Sheryl Swoopes.

12. If your daughter has just learned about Amelia Earhart or Joan of Arc at school, Halloween is a great opportunity to make learning fun. Sit down with her and talk about real women pirates, explorers and spies. Visit the library and check out books on Jane Goodall (a costume could be completed with a stuffed chimpanzee) or Sally Ride! But don't stop there. Why can.t she be Van Gogh with a palette, paintbrushes and a bandage on her ear? Why can't she be Mozart with a ruffled shirt, a powdered wig, a feather pen and composition pad? It's great to learn about women in history who have made their mark, but this is a day of imagination so she can be anyone, any profession, any role.

Update on Walmart T-shirts

Since the letter was sent, we've heard unofficially that the stalking shirts have been removed from the shelves but Walmart still has given no official position on the subject. Many thanks and much love to the North Carolina Coalition against Domestic Violence, who jump started this fight. We will keep you all posted on the subject and in the meantime feel free to write a letter against Walmart's t-shirt normalizing domestic violence.