Wow. Just wow. This is brilliant marketing, making a complex idea simple.
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Posts tagged as:
Girls
A few weeks back, the Guardian had a story on teen bloggers making waves in the blogosphere. Among the young women they covered were a shopping guru named Kristin Prim and a 20-year-old “student confessor” named Angelique. There was also a teen blogger I want to give a grown-up feminist shout-out to: 16-year-old “angry young feminist” Julie Zeilinger and her blog, the F-Bomb (which recently covered one of the axes I love to grind: slutty Hallowe’en outfits).
But the blog that jumped out at me most was 13-year-old Tavi Wiliams’ Style Rookie, which was featured in the New York Times Magazine last year. Tavi blogs with amazing passion and an astonishing breadth of knowledge about fashion–a knowledge that would make even Jeanne Bekker blush. But what jumped out at me most about Tavi’s blog is just how smart it is: she’s a great, funny writer, she offers heartfelt coverage of the fashion shows she attends, and she has pics and videos of herself that exploit her knowledge and experiences of fashion, rather than her body.
Social media tools offers teenage girls today endless opportunities to express themselves and their creativity. Girls who are interested in publishing, writing, photography, making videos, creative audio/radio–and finding an audience for all of this–have so many outlets that old fart Gen Xers like the gals here at Confabulous never had (that’s why we’re making up for lost time!). And that’s what Tavi is doing.
But what’s so great about her is how much she’s doing what she’s doing while still being such a normal little kid! She is a self-confessed “dork,” she has a sensible haircut and her glasses are not unlike the glasses I wore when I was her age. How can you not dig a kid like this?
I can’t embed the video here, but go here to see Tavi talking about what she did with her summer and you’ll see just how irresistibly lovely she is.
How many of us wish we could have been that confident and comfortable with ourselves at that age? By blogging, Tavi will now have a record for the rest of her life of how brave she was/is for not being afraid to be different, for using clothes to express herself and for sharing her passion with the world. She’ll never be able to hide from herself how powerful she is when she’s just being her.
Finally, much propos to Tavi’s dad, the one who chaperones her when she attends fashion shows. I think it takes a certain kind of parental bravery to allow your kid to be herself. It reminds me of a quote I read once by Ellen Page, something to the effect of, “My parents never pushed me and my parents never held me back.” Being able to facilitate your kid’s interests without getting in her way is a freaky achievement of balance, and my hats are off to those who do it. I only hope I can be that kind of parent to my daughter.
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High schooler Madeline Conrique and the other members of the Women’s Health and Issues Club at Arcadia High in Arcadia, California spent the weeks leading up to their prom (held this past weekend) fighting for the event to be misogyny-free. Their target? Opprobrious song lyrics degrading to women:
“Some of the songs call women `bitches’ and `hos,’ or refer to them as objects and treat them like animals,” Conrique said. “We find that offensive.”
To this end, the girls successfully garnered 130 signatures on a petition circulated around school. Of course, not all students were in favour of their efforts–sadly, other girls were among the petition’s staunchest opponents:
“The girls, surprisingly, were turned off,” Conrique said. “They were telling us that we were ruining their prom and that they liked to dance to those songs.”
Unfortunate, to say the least.
Nonetheless, Conrique and the others were successful in having some twenty offensive songs pulled from the prom playlist. Even before this it was obvious they were already winners–how great must it be to attend a high school with a sustained Women’s Health and Issues Club?
To honour their success, we give you the now-classic Queen Latifah ditty U.N.I.T.Y., a challenge to those who refer to women using derogatory language (please click on the unfortunate–sorry–gun graphic to rock out).
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Wow. This is really jaw-dropping. In what must have been an early backlash response to second wave feminism, someone named Whitney Darrow published a children’s book in 1970 called I’m Glad I’m a Boy! I’m Glad I’m a Girl! Emily over at My Blahg has posted the entirety of the book and it really is worth taking a gander. It is both jaw-dropping and hilarious, filled with brilliant binaries like, “Boys are strong. Girls are graceful.” “Boys are doctors. Girls are nurses.” “Boys are pilots. Girls are stewardesses.” What’s kinda is disturbing is that, judging from the comments section, some people seem to think these things are still true.
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This sounds like a really cool project. I really love this idea. And whether or not you’re putting in your submission, I’d be fascinated to hear from readers what their answers to these questions are:
*Ophelia’s Voice* (www.opheliasvoice.org) is launching a new grassroots project called the “Legacy Book Project” to compile reflections from girls and adult women about female leadership, which will be made available in late June 2009. This project is in the spirit of recognizing the value of reciprocal mentorship, essentially addressing the question: “What can girls offer women? What can women offer girls?”. We are looking for *250-word submissions* from self-identified girls and women in any corner of the world that want to address the following question:
Girls: Write a letter to yourself at age 30. What do you hope you will have accomplished at the age? How do you hope the world has changed for female leaders and gender equality? What will you want to remember about being a young woman?
Women: Write a letter to yourself at age 13. What advice do you wish you had at that age? What would you tell yourself about your potential to be a leader? What has changed in your life from that age? How has feminism changed?
We are looking for candid and honest submissions, and will not censor
submissions in any way. This is a project with very few limitations, so
express your “letter” in a length and style you are comfortable with -
please don’t feel limited by traditional letter formats.All contributors will receive a copy of the grassroots publication in the
summer of 2009. If possible, please include a photo of yourself as an
adolescent girl (ages 10 – 13 if possible) with your submission. Don’t
hesitate to contact us at joanne@opheliasvoice.org with any questions.
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Whenever I’m feeling down about the state of women and girls in North America, I go on over to Amy Poehler’s project, Smart Girls at the Party. The only thing I don’t like about the site is the fact that I didn’t come up with it myself. Smart Girls features conversations with Amy and her friends with girls who are outstanding just because they are themselves. I don’t know where they get these girls from, but they are pretty rad. I finally got around to watching Amy’s conversation with Ruby, and I feel like this is a clip I could just watch again and again and again.
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Yesterday, Mattel and Nickelodeon revealed the newly re-designed “tween” (ugh) Dora the Explorer (here she is on the left; see the original Dora below). Earlier in the month, a silhouette of the adventurer was released, causing quite an uproar raised among parents about the transformation. Concerns were raised about the change in Dora’s hair (long and flowing, rather than a sensible bowl cut) to her body (the original being quite appropriate for a 5-year old child; the “tween-ified” version being possibly too skinny) to her clothes (the silhouette making it appear that she was wearing a mini skirt, which is just absurd for someone solving mysteries full-time).
Now that the actual image has been released, minds can be set at rest that Dora hasn’t been turned into a total sexpot. But this new version is still troubling. The femme-ed up Dora looks and sounds like a cross between Carrie Bradshaw and a Bratz doll. According to the Mattel press release, Dora’s grown up, moved to the city and acquired a whole new fashionable look. She’ll have four new friends (buh-bye, Boots!) to solve mysteries with (OMG! Will their names be Miranda, Charlotte and Samantha? And, um…Louise–you know, Jennifer Hudson giving the SATC movie a little bit of flavour). Plus, as Dodai at Jezebel notes, it sure looks like she’s gotten her hands on some mascara and lip gloss, even though Mattel claims she’s not wearing any makeup.
The point is, the femme-ed up Dora is watered down, down to the point of same old, same old. It’s true that the marketing folks didn’t lighten her skin colour (phew!), but they sure made her a lot more vanilla. She’s not a character young girls can identify with as an adventurer and problem solver; now she’s just one more figure in popular culture through which girls absorb messages about the importance of beauty before all else.
And as a total aside, have we not all learned our lesson by now from the Fug Girls about wearing goddamn leggings?
My daughter is still far too young to know who Dora the Explorer is (the child is still at the stage where she doesn’t even realize it’s her own reflection she’s looking at in the mirror). But every time I despaired about the possibilities for her to grow up with diverse, non-sexist toys, I knew Dora would be waiting for her. By the time my kid has enough hand-eye coordination to manipulate a doll, we’ll be well past the current incarnation and on to Dora the Pole Dancer, I’m sure.
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