[Re-post] The Dating Game: Sluts Don't Get to Be Happy

Just wanted to re-post this article from Bitch Mag by Megan Carpentier

 ...definitely some great food for thought for the ongoing debate. (I'm not saying I agree with all of it, but I like how she digs in and provokes thought.)

If you haven't heard, there's only one possible result when you're a "slut"—particularly if you have the audacity to do it without shame and—clutch your pearls, ladies—talk about it in a public forum.

 
Read more at Bitch Mag...

Guest Post: Beauty and Popularity

by Nancy Gruver

Peggy Moss’ wonderful new book, One of Us, got me thinking about the definition of beauty and how girls decide if they fit into it or not. The book takes us along with Roberta James, the lively and open main character, as she navigates the cliques on her first day at a new school.

As various groups tell Roberta that “you’re one of us,” only to say she doesn’t really belong with them as they learn more about her she begins to feel she doesn’t fit anywhere. Nearly all of us have felt like this one time or another. 

To soften the blow of rejection, Roberta even starts telling groups she doesn’t belong with them before they tell her that. She’s internalized the message that she can only be part of a group if she’s like them in every way.
Fortunately for readers, a group has formed around being different from each other. They welcome Roberta as she is. 

In its simplicity, the story provides wonderful opportunities for readers to observe and relate to the many differences between people. It gently conveys the limited divisions we impose on each other and encourages us to transcend them. 

One of Us will start great conversations with girls and boys of all ages who are seeking ways to make peace between who they are and who the outside world wants them to be.  Read it and share it. 

Nancy Gruver is Founder of www.newmoon.com - a creative online community and magazine for girls ages 8 and up where girls also like being different from each other, even when it’s hard.

Press release: NewMoon.com’s “Beautiful Girls” Raise the Value of Inner Beauty

Spreading the word...! 

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:              


Girls Fight Harmful Beauty Messages:
NewMoon.com’s “Beautiful Girls” Raise the Value of Inner Beauty

Flashing zits on a virtual face seek to convince girls to retouch “unflattering” Facebook photos so no one will “gawk at them.” Relentless media and marketing tell girls that their looks are far more important than their minds, spirits, or talents.

Girls have had enough.

Now, girls are fighting back with NewMoon.com’s “Beautiful Girls” campaign. Starting today, through June 30, anyone worldwide can honor a girl or woman for her inner beauty: her accomplishments, passion, creativity, compassion, and all the other things that make up a wonderful person by completing a brief nomination form at www.newmoon.com.

Starting May 1, all the nominees will be featured in the Beautiful Girls section of NewMoon.com: the safe, ad-free, creative community made by and for girls. This powerful campaign counteracts unhealthy messages like those at PicTreat.com, where “face detection & correction technology … can smooth out skin, remove skin flaws….

PicTreat is just a new example of the age-old messages that led 90 percent of the teen girls questioned in a 2009 Girl Scout Research Institute study to say they couldn’t measure up to “beauty” standards.

“Stuff like that makes me furious,” says Nneoma Igwe, 13, of New Moon’s Girls Editorial Board. “We girls know that what we do, think and care about is more important than how other people think we should look. With this year’s “Beautiful Girls” online event, and our What Is Beauty magazine (in bookstores May 1) we tell the world what really matters!”

New Moon Girl Media Founder Nancy Gruver says, “For 17 years, New Moon has believed in the power and beauty of girls being themselves. This year, we’re in the leadership group convened by the American Psychological Association and Girls Scouts of the USA to support H.R. 4925 the Healthy Media for Youth Act. Girls need it desperately.”

According to the American Psychological Association, three of the most common mental health problems among girls — eating disorders, depression or depressed mood, and low self-esteem — are linked to sexualization of girls and women in media.

Gruver says, “But there’s better news among the thousands of New Moon girls: when asked to define beauty for the May-June issue of New Moon Girls magazine, our members tell about their inner beauty shining out in creativity, courage, and compassion; the only beauty that can keep them feeling happy and fulfilled. “

Anyone can nominate someone (even themselves!) to be a New Moon Beautiful Girl—just go to www.newmoon.com/form/11/beautiful-girl-nomination and fill out the simple entry.

Then look for that girl’s first name on NewMoon.com in May, June and July.

“After all,” Nneoma says, “Real Beauty isn’t about how we look. It's about who we are and what we do.”

Women's History Month guest post: Why Women’s History?

by Barbara J.Berg, Ph.D.      
                                              

“I’m not a hero,” said Jesse Ames. “I’m only doing what is right.”

What Jesse is doing is running the Red River Women’s Clinic in Fargo, North Dakota, the only medical facility in the state available to women who need to terminate their pregnancies. Although Cass County, where Fargo is located, counts in the 88% of all U.S. counties lacking an identifiable abortion provider, two female physicians, one from Texas, the other from Minnesota fly to Fargo and perform abortions twice a week, Jesse explained. The health center sees approximately 1,300 women each year, some drive over five hours to get there, many have no health insurance, but each one leaves with some form of birth control in her hands.

Red River has thus far escaped the violence inflicted upon other clinics in the nation, but the threat is ever-present. Jesse has had to brandish a stun gun to fend off aggressive protestors. She takes a different route home from work each day, always checking the rear view mirror, and her children use a different last name.

When I asked what led her to this work, she answered simply, “I took women’s history in school.”

Jesse is an heir to the rich legacy of second wave feminists’ determination to challenge the all-male canon and bring women into the historical narrative. We looked for inspiration in the lives of those before us, many from the civil rights movement, many excavated from the rich yet untapped soil of our distant past. Isabella Graham, defying formidable male opposition of the early republic, ventured without a chaperon through the notorious Five Points District in New York to assist the destitute of her sex; Harriet Jacobs, born a slave in North Carolina, endured unmitigated hardships, hiding in an attic for seven years so she could stay near her daughter and away from the horrific abuse of her master;  Sarah Winnemucca, author of the first autobiography of a Native America woman, Life Among the Piutes, remained a tireless advocate for the rights of her people. Crippling restraints and staunched dreams had carved inner beings of indomitable strength.

We called these women role models. Our icons. Connecting to them urged us to continue fighting for equal footing in a soul-deflating society systematically forcing women into second place.  Their stories served as both life raft and compass in the perilous uncharted seas of sexism. Not because they were perfect, but because they weren’t, they empowered us.  We believed it was crucial for women and girls, but also for men and boys, nurtured on masculine superiority, to realize the sweeping range of women’s fortitude, tenacity and achievement.

I started teaching women’s history at Sarah Lawrence College in the late-1970s under the mentorship of the esteemed Gerda Lerner, a pioneer in the field. On my office door, I hung a poster proclaiming: Women’s History is a World Worth Fighting For.  Our struggle back then, to establish the field as a separate discipline, was  enhanced by the formation of the National Women’s History Project (NWHP) in 1980 by Molly Murphy MacGregor and four of her colleagues. The NWHP’s goal, “to broadcast women’s historical achievements,” initially took the form of lobbying Congress to designate March as National Women’s History Month, now celebrated all over the country.

The incorporation of women’s history into the curricula at colleges and universities across the nation created a sea change in how Americans viewed our past. Over the course of the next decade, feminist scholarship exploded, stimulating ever-more research and encouraging the formation of interdisciplinary courses. As women of color called for a more complex approach to women’s experiences, Black Women’s History emerged as a field in its own right.  The abundance of organizations, conferences, journals and monographs dedicated to analyzing the interconnections of gender with class, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, cultural and, more recently, global disparities, have deepened our understanding of the relationships between different groups of women as well as between women and men.

I have been fortunate to have watched the delight and enthusiasm of students for whom women’s history is an ongoing discovery, a source of profound intellectual engagement,  pride and self esteem, sometimes transformative, often a prod for action, but always a gift. It offers girls and young women an opportunity to understand the distribution of power and privilege in society as it affords them a new visibility in development of our nation..

The benefits of knowing one’s past seem so obvious, I assumed, naively perhaps, that women’s history would remain a permanent  fixture in our national consciousness. But after surveying nearly 400 women of different ages and backgrounds, I discovered sadly that over the past fifteen years women are once again being marginalized in the master historical narrative. The majority of the respondents, especially those 35 years old and younger, had no opportunity to study women’s history and  confessed to knowing very little about women’s accomplishments, challenges, or even their rights.

Women’s history courses today are an endangered species, according to Molly Murphy MacGregor, currently Executive Director of the NWHP.  There have, of course, always been the naysayers like  Conservative writer and policy-maker David Horowitz. His academia-bashing One Party Classroom, cataloguing what he considers the worst 150 courses taught at American schools, highlighted 60 focused on women and gender. Horowitz’s charge—women’s studies courses are taught by ideologues rather than scholars—is nothing new, but in the  current economic climate, with women’s studies courses (which include women’s history) on the chopping block, right wing propaganda can have a destructive impact.

The late educator Myra Sadker once said, “Each time a girl opens a book and reads a womanless history, she learns she is worth less.” I would go even further and suggest that she learns that the lives of those before her are also worth less. The Stupak Amendment’s addition to the House Healthcare Reform Bill stimulated much discussion about the generational divide within the pro-choice movement. Women, born after the Roe v. Wade decision of 1973, do not feel the same sense of urgency about choice—so the argument goes—compared to older women whose lives were shaped by the illegality of abortion. And while many members of Gen X and younger are committed to fighting for reproductive justice, there are others who told me they “simply can’t imagine a world without access to abortion.” 

Understandable. Also rectifiable.

It’s hard to read pre-Roe stories  (such as those reported by Dr. Edward Keemer of Washington, D. C.) and not imagine the absolute desperation of his young patients: “I had treated a woman…[who] still had the straightened-out coat hanger hanging from her vagina… Over the years I was to encounter hundreds of other women who had resorted to imaginative but deadly methods of self-induced abortion.…A sixteen-year-old girl…died after douching with a cupful of bleach...”  

We forget the dark and tragic stories of long ago at our own peril. Not knowing your past is a banishment of sorts, cutting you off from powerful connections and deepest parts of your being. It limits the opportunity to understand the multiple experiences that have shaped the nation, shaped your life as a citizen in it and will shape possibilities for the future. “Writing Women Back Into History,” the NWHP’s theme for its Thirtieth Anniversary Celebration, hopes to reverse this trend.

Throughout the month, workshops, symposiums and speeches honoring the vivid heritage of diverse American women will be held across the country.  Even if you can’t get to one of the formal events, there’s much you can  do: visit your local library and take out some books on women’s history to read to your children or talk with their schools about  how the contributions of more than half the population are woven into the curricula, not just in March but for the entire year. This might be a good time for your book club to add women’s memoirs and diaries to its roster or to ask your elderly neighbor about her youth, I bet she has a story or two to tell.

As for me—I’m going to dust off my Women’s History is A World Worth Fighting For poster, hang it up on my door again and get to work.

Barbara J. Berg, Ph.D. is on the Board of the National Women’s History Project and author of Sexism in America: Alive, Well and Ruining Our Future (Chicago Review Press, Sept. 2009). 

**Celebrate Women's History month with girls in your life at New Moon!**

Diane Levin on the bigger meaning of Senator Brown’s “available daughters” comments

Diane Levin comments on why Senator Brown's “available daughters” comments are not light and funny.

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Interview with Liz Funk, author of Supergirls!

Liz Funk, author of the new book, Supergirls Speak Out: Inside the Crisis of Overachieving Girls, is on a virtual book tour--and a mission to widen everyone's tolerance and respect for being the imperfect, interesting, great people we all are.

In this interview with yours truly, Liz talks about how girls today feel they need to be perfect, gives insight into why trying to be perfect diminishes quality of life and relationships, and shares some tips on how to cherish being genuine. Enjoy!


JB: You’ve done a lot of research and interviewing for your book, Supergirls Speak Out, where you indicate that many girls and women today feel they have to be perfect, or “supergirls” who can do and be everything. Why do they have this feeling? What is particularly going on in our society that makes women feel so pressured?

LF: Girls today want to be a perfect 10. They want to excel at everything they attempt; in short, they’re perfect. Sadly, I think many young women get the message from the media, from their peer groups, and most notably, from themselves, that they have to be perfect if they want to be loved. It’s largely caused by sexism in society (especially in high schools and teen youth culture), the media, and our fast-pasted culture that doesn’t really encourage young people to spend much solitary time alone with their thoughts—they’re too busy blogging, and tweeting, and Facebooking!

JB: Is this an issue unique to the current female generation? Or, how does it tie in with past generations’ struggles for gender equality?

LF: The first draft of my book actually had a chapter about how the Supergirl dilemma is nothing new; it’s just the new century’s version of “the feminine mystique” that plagued women in the 1950’s! However, the tone of the chapter didn’t quite work, so I cut it (my initial major in college was women’s studies, so sometimes I have a tendency to write in a very academic way and bring up Friedan and Dworkin when it’s not the right place to do it. Haha…). Anyway, I think that what we are seeing here with the Supergirl dilemma is actually the exact same problem as “the feminine mystique” with symptoms that are the exact opposite. In the 1950’s; women were told that there was one way to be a woman—to be a loving homemaker mother who kept herself extremely busy with being pretty, having the latest swirling skirts and washing machine, and jetting off to PTA meetings and social committees, all in an effort to distract herself from the fact that society’s prescribed role for women was very limiting. Today, girls are told that there’s one way to be a girl: be a good daughter who keeps herself extremely busy with being pretty, having the latest season’s miniskirt and sweaters from American Eagle and the Gap, and keeping extremely busy with school and work and extracurricular activities, all in an effort to distract herself from the fact that society’s prescribed role for women is very limiting. There is the obvious difference that in the 1950’s, young women weren’t encouraged to be smart or intellectual or leaders, and today, young women are required to be intellectual and leaders, but at the end of the day, I would argue that the Supergirl dilemma is the second major crisis for young women since “the feminine mystique” that mostly arose because feminism’s work hasn’t been finished yet. We need to teach young women that it’s good to be a girl, and that they don’t need to feel confined to adhering to a very limiting female ideal in exchange for their community or their peer group’s approval.

JB: In your opinion, how does today’s media play into how women feel about themselves? What particular sources have what effects?

LF: I think the biggest problem in today’s media is that the women in the media look perfect. Female celebrities have never been thinner—Lindsay Lohan, Hilary Duff, Nicole Richie, etc. etc.—but also, we’ve never had celebrities all conforming to one limiting female ideal before: long hair, charming and giggly, and not particularly rebellious, like Kate Hudson, Anne Hathaway, and Jennifer Aniston (although I do love all three of these actresses). I don’t think that Angelina Jolie could have ever gotten famous today in her punk-rebel stage, because every female celebrity we see is well-groomed and nice and extroverted. Also, there are a lot of fictional Supergirls that influence how the girls at home feel about themselves: Elle Woods in Legally Blonde, the girls of Gossip Girl, and even Hannah Montana—although these are lovable characters, they give even the youngest girls the idea that beauty and success are simultaneous requirements and that you should make it look as though both come easily.

JB: What role do you feel women have in contributing to each other’s self-esteem or lack of confidence?

LF: Once young women observe perfect women in the media, they emulate having a perfect exterior, and then that model of perfection starts to take off in peer groups. I think that once one girl in a social circle—whether we’re talking in high school, in college, or among twentysomethings—starts to appear effortlessly perfect, her friends and her peers try to imitate that, and it snowballs from there.

JB: What are the consequences of trying to be perfect for individual women, their relationships, and even society or the world?

LF: Statistically, more young women than ever before are considering suicide, and I think it’s no coincidence that this is happening simultaneously with the rise of Supergirls. There are other mental health repercussions that I observed amongst girls, like anxiety, eating disorders, OCD, and depression. And I think the broadest problem is not having a sense of self; not having an identity outside of being a Supergirl or a hard worker.

JB: What are some tips you have for girls and women to positively feel they can be and do whatever they want, without feeling they must be perfect?

LF: First and foremost, girls should get some hobbies. Find things that you enjoy and that you feel passionate about that have nothing to do with work. For example, I just took up the oboe, I love to paint, I love to go to art museums, I love to read novels, and I love stupid movies (like Grandma’s Boy, Superbad, and Little Nicky). Make collages with pictures of random things that you find intriguing. Turn off the lights in your room and listen to music with your eyes closed. Meditate. Find your center! And the most revolutionary thing women can do is look in mirror and say aloud, “I love you. I appreciate you. You matter.” Say it enough, and I think the Supergirls will start to mean it, and see their Supergirl selves fading away.

Young women need to find their sense of intrinsic worth—why they matter regardless of what they look like, what other people think of them, how they make others feel, and what they’ve accomplished. Everyone has worth and everyone has value, and girls need to realize that when they are sitting on their couch in their jammies at 3pm on Saturday afternoon with their hair greasy and their nail polish chipping, they are just as special and just as important as when their hair is blown-dry and they are in a minidress and leggings out on the town for the night with a cute date! What I recommend is that young women spend as much time as possible embracing their creativity, developing their tastes and their personality, and finding themselves! Young women need to find their value, and I think the best way to do that is to be alone with one’s thoughts, spend time alone with oneself, and start to enjoy spending time alone and enjoy listening to one’s internal monologue.

JB: You mentioned that, under the pressure to be perfect, girls and women are oftentimes afraid to be themselves. What are some ways girls and women can feel comfortable exploring and being who they are?

LF: I absolutely love the movie Juno. Casting aside the movie’s puzzling treatment of abortion, I love the character Juno and how unafraid she was to be herself; she liked guitars and punk music and sarcasm and funky clothes. And I think that if more girls could embrace their inner-Juno, and be exactly who they want to be, regardless of whether it would affect how others see them or their place on the social totem pole, we’d be in great shape.

Supergirls on lizfunk.com
Supergirls on Amazon

Guest Post Invite

I've been doing this blogging thing for a bit and I have to say it feels strange. I'm just sort of talking into outer space as if I'm important, and it's been feeling fake and lonely.

So I have this idea of doing something I've really enjoyed on other blogs: featuring guest writers.

If you've got blog posts already written up you'd like me to feature, if you want to do a Q&A, if you want to write something especially for In Her Image readers, if [insert your brilliant idea here] - please let me know!

Feel free to comment on this post or email me at inherimage@juliabarry.com.

I can't wait for your company and insightful writing to brighten up this solo shop. :)