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!

Join us for our upcoming trainings!

Have you noticed the media lately? On internet, TV, and magazines, girls and women are reduced to body parts, criticized for their looks, and encouraged to work on their physique rather than their minds. Girlfighting is showcased on nearly every channel and hyper-sexuality is thrust upon girls at younger and younger ages.

Of course, we have all noticed the media; it permeates our everyday lives even as adults. Rather than concede to the negative messages that we all are subjected to, why not develop skills to deconstruct, analyze and confront the culture itself?

As a colleague in the struggle to create more supportive environments for girls to thrive, I want to invite you to attend Cultivating Hardiness Zones and Becoming a Muse, two back-to-back strength-based trainings for adults working with girls. Developed by Dr. Mary Madden and myself, Cultivating Hardiness Zones and Becoming a Muse are designed to help you incorporate the latest research on girls' development into work you're already doing with girls. This isn't a training that stresses the inner girl or works to improve "self-esteem," but rather focuses on providing girls with an environment that's conducive to learning and growing despite cultural messages and stereotypes.

Our two upcoming trainings are:

March 15th and 16th, 2010
University of New England, Portland, ME
9am-4pm
Registration fee for both days is $295 by March 1st; $320 afterward.
Registration for one day is $175.00 before March 1st; $190 afterward.
Some partial scholarships are available.

AND

April 27th and 28th, 2010
Simmons College, Boston, MA
9am-4pm
Registration fee for both days is $295 by April 13th; $320 afterward.
Registration for one day is $175.00 before April 13th; $190 afterward.
Some partial scholarships are available.

Registered groups of three or more will receive a 15% discount.

At this training, you'll learn concrete strategies to:

• Help girls and women build meaningful connections;
• Show girls how to find and use the resources they need to thrive; and,
• Tap into girls' energy and creativity and inspire them to make the world one which values them for who they are, not how they look!

Who should attend these trainings? Teachers, guidance counselors, school administrators, health service and social service providers, parents and guardians, and anyone who wants to learn more effective approaches to bringing out the best in girls!

Thank you for the important role you play in girls’ lives. We look forward to seeing you this spring!

Are we getting under American Apparel’s, ah, skivvies?

Thanks to our sister org, GirlZone.com, for letting us know that American Apparel has now invited men and boys to join their crazy sexist ad campaign. How’s that for a creative response to our Girlcott? Add boys and hope we go away!

It’s all pretty disingenuous, of course, given AA’s history of sexist ad campaigns targeting girls. The simple reality is that this ad campaign sits in a culture that highly sexualizes girls and women, something AA knows and takes full advantage of. So it’s no surprise that boys aren’t posting photos anywhere close to the number girls are posting. No surprise, either, that all the top vote-getters on the site are girls.

AA is capitalizing on the lowest common denominator marketing strategy to make a buck: selling sex and sexism. Are we supposed to believe that an equal opportunity invite to sexualize boys too makes this ad campaign okay? Please.

Tell American Apparel that objectifying bodies – any body--and commodifying sex to sell their products is not okay.

Our Response to the Kaiser Report on Teens & Media

On January 20, 2010, the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) released Generation M²: Media in the Lives of 8- to 18-Year-Olds. The tagline: “Daily media use among children and teens up dramatically from five years.”

KFF explains that while this age group already devotes over 53 hours a week on “entertainment media,” the use of multiple media outlets at the same time – such as listening to music while surfing the web – exacerbate this daily intake of media content. Upon comparing 2009 findings to those of their 2004 Generation M² report, the report authors claim that children and teens have gained an additional hour and seventeen minutes of daily media exposure. They attribute a number of influences to this increase, such as the popularity of “mobile media,” which drives the accessibility of media. Not surprisingly, three-quarters of 8 to 18-year-olds say that their media use is unmonitored by parents and guardians, and according to the KFF report, this unbridled flow of information is taking its toll on kids. The authors assert that “heavy media users” suffer from poor grades in comparison to “light media users.”

At Hardy Girls Healthy Women (HGHW), we pose that the wellbeing of children and youth are affected far beyond their performance in school. We argue that media use among 8 to 18-year-olds, as reported by KFF, sheds light on the venues where girls and boys are gathering media messages, and subsequently, where they are learning negative gender stereotypes.

Let’s take a look at social networking sites, such as Facebook and MySpace, where media bombardment is commonplace. Advertisements featured on these sites are often marketed to a specific audience, making their impact even more pinpointed and dangerous. A middle-school aged girl may encounter, for instance, a plethora of ads suggesting weight loss solutions as the secret to happiness. A high-school boy may alternatively be offered games that appeal to his heightened online presence but that also portray men as violent and malicious members of society. Both scenarios show that gender norms are being delivered to girls and boys across the media spectrum.

Multi-tasking with media-based products threatens children and teens even further, as their ability to deconstruct images and content are squandered by repeating and overlapping messages. For example, while perusing her Facebook profile, a teenage girl comes in contact with numerous advertisements, including those that promote body augmentation and negative body image. Meanwhile, the lyrics of a familiar pop song playing on her computer reiterate the degradation of women’s bodies. The message from both the song and the advertisement are not only common but normalized features in this young girl’s life, and without the skill set needed to tackle multiple media outlets, these messages continue to guide her self-perception.

While exposure to the media carries a number of drawbacks, particularly for children and teenage consumers, the messages can be broken down. Cultivating media literacy among the younger generation is one such way to empower children and teens. Lyn Mikel Brown, co-founder of HGHW, along with her colleagues, argue that by fostering such a analytical eye, youth become active objectors to the mainstream stereotypes and negative portrayals of girls and boys.

To learn more about media literacy, please join us for our spring trainings in Portland and Boston. You can sign up online or by phone.

New Petition Link for American Apparel Hits Rock "Bottom"

Because the petition we hosted on citizenspeak.org has received such a strong response from our friends around the US and internationally, we've moved the petition to http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/americanapparel/ in order to allow those not living in the US to sign on their support. Please post far and wide - together we can make a difference in the way that American Apparel and other companies market to girls!