SPARK Ally of the day: Lyn Mikel Brown

We're ramping up energy in support of SPARK: Sexualization Protest: Action, Resistance, Knowledge, a growing movement to push back on the sexualization of girls and push forward girls’ right to an embodied, healthy sexuality.


The October 22nd SPARK Summit will launch an intergenerational movement to support and stand with girls. In response to the American Psychological Association’s Task Force Report on Sexualization of Girls, the most downloaded documented in the history of APA’s website, the SPARK Summit will engage teen girls to be part of the solution rather than to protect them from the problem, giving them the tools they need to become activists, organizers, researchers, policy influencers, and media makers.


Activists and organizers around the country are contributing to SPARK already by drawing attention to the issue of early sexualization.  In our series called  "30 Allies in 30 Days," Hardy Girls Healthy Women is highlighting thirty fabulous individuals who are actively doing their part to ignite SPARK. Our first ally is Dr. Lyn Mikel Brown:


I'm co-founder of  Hardy Girls Healthy Women, professor of Education at Colby College, author, and activist. I'm also the Powered By Girl (PBG) campaign organizer, which means I work with amazingly creative and smart teen girls who are contributing their voices and activism to SPARK.  I'm adding my spark to this movement because I'm tired of the pornifed images that pass as female sexuality in media and I want to do what I can to make room for girls to say who they are and what they want.

Part of "30 Allies in 30 Days" Learn more about the SPARK Summit  and check back tomorrow for our next ally!

A Dad and His Daring Daughter!

Hardy Girls has long paid tribute to its Founding Othermothers—an amazing group of women who made a financial commitment to the organization way back in the beginning. They’re women who nourish a girl’s hope through acts of love, courage, and commitment to making the community and the world a better place for girls. But we’d be remiss if we didn’t acknowledge another population — this one of male allies — that does the same thing for girls and for Hardy Girls. We’re calling them Otherfathers and this month, in honor of Father’s Day, we’re bringing you a story about one of them. We spoke with Scott Price, who, as a long-time supporter of Hardy Girls and dad to twelve-year-old Maddie, is both an Otherfather and a regular one. And he rocks at both!

Scott’s daughter, Maddie, is a sixth grader at Canaan Elementary. First introduced to Hardy Girls through Adventure Girls programming a couple of years ago, Maddie participated in snowshoeing and frog tracking. She later attended the Girls Unlimited! Conference. Of raising Maddie, Scott tells us: “I think there’s a lot more opportunity than when I was a kid for girls in general.”

Having grown up with five younger sisters, Scott has seen a progression in activities that girls are encouraged to pursue now. “I think with equality, we’ve come a long way. I think there’s more opportunity for sports and education. I think there’s more opportunity for college careers. I like to see Maddie have those chances.”

One of the things Scott says he wants most for his daughter is for her to have a variety of different experiences. “When I had to start making my adult decisions, I was able to see what was out there, so I’m big on trying to get her lots of experiences. It’s most of the things I like to do — outdoor stuff, cultural stuff, travel.” Indeed, they’ve taken Maddie all around the U.S., to Canada, and even to London. They take canoe trips and go on day hikes as a family, and attend shows and concerts at the Waterville and Skowhegan Opera Houses. “We like those quite a lot,” said Scott. “I think there are a lot of things to take advantage of in Central Maine.”

It’s clear that Maddie is a busy kid; she’s particularly devoted to dance and trombone lessons and babysitting. “She took a babysitting class and she understands what money is.” But while Scott encourages new experiences, he understands the importance of not overscheduling. “She doesn’t have to do everything, all the sports and all the dance… It’s a balance you have to find. I find that home time is good. And friend time; you’ve got have friends, too.”

Maddie and her friends are looking forward to starting middle school in the fall, and Scott is excited for her. “She has lots of good friends that are going with her. They’re all good students, and she has a good base.” It doesn’t mean, however, that he doesn’t worry about other influences. “I’m constantly aware of commercials and stuff and I’m always spouting off behind the real meaning of what they’re trying to sell. With the new computerization age, the kids get an amazing amount of ads and exposure to stuff; it’s hard to keep up. I talk about that stuff — I hope the kids listen.” We’d be willing to make a bet that they do, Scott!


Happy Father's Day to all of the fathers and Otherfathers! We'd love to hear about why your dad rocks-- leave us a comment and tell us all about him! Or, if you're a dad yourself, let us know what you do to support your daughter!

SPARK! Summit Needs Girls' Votes!

We’re sparking a revolution and it needs a name! Well, we have a name (SPARK!) but need your input on what S-P-A-R-K stands for.

Hardy Girls, TrueChild, Women’s Media Center, ASAP, and the Ms. Foundation for Women are planning a summit to ignite a movement in protest of the sexualization of girls in media and in support of better images and messages about girls’ sexuality. So much of the media suggests that our sexuality is the most important aspect of who we are – that girls’ and women’s value comes from just how sexy we are – say nothing about our interests, talents, or rockstar personalities (see Gen Z Does Single Ladies and Stupid Is As Stupid Does).

You helped us brainstorm some great acronyms for what SPARK! could stand for. We’ve taken the top 4 options and now need your input. What do you like best? Take a look at the poll and let us know what you think. Voting closes on Friday at 5:00 pm so vote now and tell your friends!

Gen Z does 'Single Ladies'

by Lyn Mikel Brown, Ed.D

Anyone half paying attention to the media in the past few weeks has seen the YouTube video of a dance troupe of seven and eight year olds doing their thing to Beyoncé’s Single Ladies. If you haven’t seen it, trust me, it’s impossible to watch and not be mesmerized. The girls hit it hard; they are frenetic, fearless, and full of themselves—and very, very good. Gyrating. Grinding. Pulsating. Bouncy balls of energy we might expect of girls this age, but in adult packaging. 

The controversy in the wake of the video was almost immediate. Not surprising, the reaction has been divided – between the ‘shocked’ and the ‘defenders.’ Those shocked by the video point out that the black and red burlesque-inspired costumes are more risqué than even Beyoncé’s outfit in her Single Ladies video. They’re appalled to watch little girls do the same dance moves they’ve seen in sexist rap videos on MTV. To the shocked, such dancing can only lead to sexual behavior. They say things like "these girls will be pregnant by 15." Worse, it’s pedophile bait. It’s morally depraved, sick, bordering on child abuse. They blame the clueless parents, the clueless dance instructor, the clueless audience cheering the girls on, and the clueless idiot who posted the video. 

Facing off against the shocked are the defenders of all things girly. What is your basic maladjustment, they wonder? Lighten up. This is the new girl power. Today’s version of girls having fun, a Gen Z rendition of flappers or jitterbugging girls kicking their feet in the air to reveal their panties. Nothing to see here, folks. Move along. You with the dirty minds, get a life.

The shocked are looking for simple answers and personal responsibility. They want someone to blame, and that usually means the parents. Good parents turn off the TV, they say, and by that I think they must mean “raise their children in a vacuum,” because, of course, TV represents a small fraction of the media kids are exposed to these days, and all of it contains highly sexualized imagery. I guess good parents also don’t let little girls take dance lessons, because I mean, really, have any of the shocked been to a local dance recital? Burlesque is the norm.

The defenders, on the other hand, refuse to entertain reality. Just girls having fun doesn’t cut it, not in an increasingly pornified culture where the boundary between childhood and adulthood is all but gone. Not when research tells us exposure to sexualized media is associated with greater acceptance of teen dating violence and sexual harassment. Not when a 2007 American Psychological Association report linked media sexualization to girls and young women’s top three mental health problems: depression, eating disorders, and low self-esteem. And not when having this kind of fun makes girls targets for name-calling, often by the shocked themselves, who like to call little girls who dance this way things like "little sluts in the making."

Whether it’s a demand for individual responsibility or a defense of individual right to fun, neither the shocked nor the defenders acknowledge the elephant in the room. Since the FTC lifted restrictions on children’s media in the 1980s, media and marketing companies have targeted younger and younger girls with sexier, thinner, more beauty-conscious and more boy-obsessed imagery and messages. As marketing to children has skyrocketed, so has children’s consumer spending. Blaming parents delights marketers and media because they’re off the hook for their unconscionable behavior –the ways they use developmental psychologists to help them reach kids and create a desire for their products, the way they immerse their brands in everything a child plays with, dresses in, or watches, the way they use the very concerns we have about the sexualization of little girls to boost their so-so ratings. 

When the video played and the reporters surfaced, I felt the way I feel each and every time “sex + girls” hits the airwaves. Whether it’s Britney going commando, junior high girls sporting rainbow bracelets, Miley pole-dancing at the Kids Choice Awards, or elementary school girls dancing to Beyoncé, reporters always sound eerily the same, a creepy mix of hand-wringing and barely hidden glee. Tell us why this is bad, they ask. How did we get to this point? Why don’t parents parent anymore? Tune in to Dr. Phil, Anderson Cooper, Fox News, Video at 6. Watch the girls with us, again and again and again and again. Isn’t it awful? 

I know what they want. They pretend to represent the shocked, calling for some parent’s head on a platter. But it’s classic bait and switch. Like so many, I also watched the parents of the dancers being interviewed and nothing in their answers made me want to chase them with pitchforks and torches. I felt for the deer-in-the-headlights father when he said he never thought of his daughter this way. I believed the mom, calm and rational, who explained that they weren’t copying Beyoncé’s moves but the Chipettes’ from the latest Alvin and the Chipmunks movie (Really, 20th Century Fox? Chipettes? How about becoming 21st Century Fox?). 

No one in their right mind can blame French maid Halloween costumes, pole dancing kits in toy stores, Tots and Tiaras-type reality shows, and Bratz dolls on parents. No one in their right mind can say this sexualized version of growing up is just good, clean fun. To ask parents to take responsibility for the billions of dollars marketers and media invest in making this stuff normal and creating little girls’ desire for this stuff, is simply crazy.
Since the APA Report on the Sexualization of Girls in Media came out in 2007, the landscape has gotten worse and the answer isn’t as simple as the ‘shocked’ and ‘defenders’ claim. So what do we do? Because we have to do something. Join Hardy Girls Healthy Women and our sister organizations, True Child, Women’s Media Center and ASAP on October 22nd at Hunter College in NYC for a national summit on the sexualization of girls. We’ll be working with parents, educators, researchers, media experts, policymakers, and most importantly, teen girls to examine the complexity of this issue, generate creative responses, and commit to policy, media and activist solutions to spark a movement and demand something better for girls. For now, save the date and we’ll keep you posted!

Less than $2,000 to go!

As you may know, Girls Rock! Weekend is not only our biggest programmatic event of the year, it's our biggest fundraiser! Money raised for Girls Rock supports the weekend, of course, but it also supports programming year-round that empowers girls to get their critical thinking caps on and make their voices heard.


We are beyond thrilled to report that we are so close to reaching our fundraising goal for 2010's weekend -- with only $1,927 left to go, the finish line is definitely in sight. Can you help us reach the mark before the weekend begins on Friday, April 9th?


Maine girls effect positive change, and next weekend we'll celebrate them all over the state. Will you join the celebration and consider digging into your pockets for some more positive change? Visit www.hghw.org/give to help do your part in making Maine a better place for girls to live and grow.

Stupid Is As Stupid Does

Written for the Feminist Psychologist by Lyn Mikel Brown, Ed.D


In 2008, the District Attorney of Wyoming County in Pennsylvania presented 16 teens – 3 boys and 13 girls -- suspected of “sexting” with a choice: either attend a 5 week, 10-hour education program designed by the District Attorney or face felony child pornography charges. Not much of a choice: if charged and convicted the teens faced a possible seven-year sentence and a felony record. They would also have to register as sex offenders for 10 years and have their names and photos posted on the state’s sex-offender website. Still, three girls refused the “voluntary education course” and instead, with the support of their parents and the ACLU, obtained a preliminary injunction barring prosecution under state child-porn laws. On March 17, 2010 the appellate court upheld the preliminary injunction, accusing prosecutors of violating the civil rights of the teens.


What had these girls done? A 12- and 13-year-old posed for pictures in their underwear at a slumber party; one was speaking on the phone, the other making a peace sign. The third girl, 14, appeared in a photo emerging from the shower wrapped in a towel, just below her breasts. There was no evidence that the girls had ever transmitted the photos; they were discovered when male students were caught trading the images over their cell phones. While both boys and girls were threatened and pressed to undergo education, only the girls were required to learn about sexual self-respect.


If you’re tuned into youth culture, it’s impossible to miss the hysteria around sexting. Research conducted by The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy revealed that 20 percent of teens in the U.S. say they have sent or posted lewd photos or video of themselves. Given that one picture can make its way far and wide in minutes, it’s likely that most of this 20% represent those forwarding or receiving photos, not posting them. But just as with previous reports of rainbow bracelets and oral sex, there’s a Press Gone Wild reaction to sexting, almost always blaming girls for their “stupid” acts.


Outside the Pennsylvania appeals court, MaryJo Miller, the mother of one of the 12 year olds, said that when she saw the pictures of the slumber party, she thought the girls were "goofballs.” Her daughter was wearing a training bra. “You are going to see more provocative photos in a Victoria's Secret catalog." That’s an understatement. Quick to judge, rarely do the press, police, or school officials make reference to the obvious: the normalizing of sexual voyeurism and sex camming in media. Whether it’s expendable babes baring it all for celebrity on Entourage, Heroes character Tracy Strauss supporting herself and her young child by stripping online, or America’s Next Top Model contestants posing in sexually provocative ways for the camera, the message to girls watching is always, if you need or want something badly enough, you should be willing to sex it up for public consumption. In the VH1 reality show For the Love of Ray J, for instance, girls with nicknames like Cocktail, Chardonnay, and Danger will do anything to be chosen. In what sounds like a middle school dating game, in one episode Ray J asks the girls “to pretend I’m out of town and you have to keep me interested.” Of course the girls do everything from a strip tease to sexy raps to making a “human banana split” -- even Ray J is so shocked by that one that he can’t stay in his seat to watch.


One newspaper excitedly reports that teens are on to the legal risks of posting photos, and so they’re taking shots of body parts or being careful not to include their faces. Who really knows how many teen girls are this hell-bent on public nudity, but no doubt American Apparel had liability in mind when they developed their recent “best bottoms” campaign. Looking for the new "face" of AA, they invited girls (18+, but really, who’s checking?) to upload a “close-up photo” of their ass-ets to the website. I don't know about you, but I’m on the edge of my own perfectly adequate seat waiting to find out which porn-inspired fave will win -- Boom Boom, Luba, bOOtAAyliCiOus, or Cherry.


We can complain about the perfectly sexy angels in Victoria’s Secret Love Your Body ad campaign (please!), but there’s something particularly icky about American Apparel’s use of ordinary women in its ads, producing low-brow Polaroid-like pictures with a back room naughty feel that normalizes the acts teen girls are now threatened with arrest for imitating. Diesel Jeans adds their spin by capitalizing on adolescent rebellion. “Stupid” is crazy, fun, risk-taking! Smart is “the crusher of possibilities.” For girls, there’s just one way to prove you’ve got the balls to be stupid: show us your boobs!


Teen girls are comparatively measured in their response to sexting. When a blogger on Jezebel.com asked about this issue, girls were more likely to say it wasn’t something they’d seen or experienced personally. They sounded more thoughtful about the causes and more understanding about the outcomes than anything reported in the news. The real story, they say, is the unintended consequences of an impulsive act; the real concern is that girls are more likely to be judged, vilified and threatened with prosecution. As one girl said of the threats to girls like those in the Pennsylvania lawsuit, “it's hard to get my head around the fact that you’re making the victim the criminal.” Pretty smart.

American Apparel’s “best bottom” contest has concluded, butt…this is so not over

I don't know about you all but we’re on the edge of our own perfectly adequate seats waiting to find out what an ideal bottom looks like and who American Apparel thinks has the best ass-ets. Will it be boom boom? Luba? bOOtAAyliCiOus? Cherry? Wait, where are the boys? Oh yea, halfway through our protest American Apparel set up a site for the guys too, where somewhere close to five guys posted pictures of their bottoms amidst the 1368 girls. Turns out that fakery just didn’t fly. In spite of AA’s lame story, this wasn’t equal opportunity sexualization; it was the same old double standard.

We can’t thank you enough for spreading the word about American Apparel’s blatant and unapologetic sexualization of girls and women. Thanks for signing our petition and for blogging, Facebooking and tweeting the story. You’re all rock stars and we’re incredibly grateful.

We felt the love, but we also fielded a lot of criticism because of this campaign, some cogently argued and some not worth repeating. More than once we heard versions of: Aren’t you just giving AA more attention? Doesn’t your outrage serve to further the appeal of American Apparel to their target market? Haven’t you learned yet that the forbidden fruit tastes sweetest, especially to teenagers? Yeah, we know this. We talked a lot about the forbidden fruit idea, in fact. We work with teen girls, we know about marketing and resistance theory–i.e., saying no, bad, is standard practice for getting teens to say yes, want. In the end, though, our staff of young women and our high school girls advisory board felt CEO Dov Charney and American Apparel had crossed the line and we had a responsibility to act.

This is not just a capitalist marketplace, it’s a marketplace of ideas, and the onus is on all of us to speak up and take action when we see something egregious and harmful. The increasing media sexualization of girls has become a pandemic, reinforcing the sexualization of and violence (sexual, physical, emotional, material) against girls and women in the global arena. In the US, it has been linked to three of young women’s most common mental health complaints: depression, low self-esteem, and eating disorders. AA products may be made in the U.S., but they’re exporting the sexualization of girls and women around the world.

Sure, American Apparel gets more attention, but so do those of us who find their practices reprehensible. Every time we speak out, we find our friends, sister organizations, and allies. Every time we talk back, we create a little more space for coalition and resistance and we educate a few more people about the harmful effects of media sexualization. Why speak out? Because the alternative is to allow the Dov Charneys of the world to pollute our environment. Silence, doing nothing, is just not an option.

Plus, roughly half of our more than 3,000 petition signers pledged to use their wallet-power to protest American Apparel's crude ad campaigns.

So, here at Hardy Girls, we're going to continue to advocate with and for girls because we're determined to create a better world for all, one where women are valued more for their beliefs and brains than they are their butts. And, we're grateful to be doing this work in coalition with so many fabulous girls, women, and male allies. Thank you!