PBG: A Revolution Powered by Girl
Powered by Girl is taking girl power back one media image at a time. PBG is an edgy, girl-driven social media campaign designed to educate teen girls about the impact of media on their lives and give them new knowledge, creative tools, and opportunities to talk back to media and demand more realistic and positive versions of girlhood.
About You
About You
First Name
Allison
Last Name
Cole
Website
Organization
Hardy Girls Healthy Women
Country
United States, ME, Kennebec County
About Your Organization
Organization Name
Hardy Girls Healthy Women
Organization Website
Organization Phone
(207) 861-8131
Organization Address
14 Common Street, Waterville, ME 04901
Organization Country
United States, ME, Kennebec County
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Your idea
Name Your Project
PBG: A Revolution Powered by Girl
Country your work focuses on
United States
Describe Your Idea
Powered by Girl is taking girl power back one media image at a time. PBG is an edgy, girl-driven social media campaign designed to educate teen girls about the impact of media on their lives and give them new knowledge, creative tools, and opportunities to talk back to media and demand more realistic and positive versions of girlhood.
Website URL
http://www.hghw.org (PBG site is currently under construction)
Innovation
What makes your idea unique?
These days, pop culture media targeting girls is filled with sexualized “gossip girls” obsessed with shopping and dieting. Girls are told that uploading images of their American Apparel-clad bottoms to be scored and judged is girl power and that choosing “stupid” over “smart” by flashing their breasts, as Diesel suggests, is fun and funny. Empowering girls with media literacy to counteract these messages isn’t enough. Girls need opportunities to think and work together, public spaces to critique and talk back, and tools to demand a more diverse and healthier set of messages. PBG connects girls with one another and gives them online tools and a platform to talk back to sexist versions of girls and women in media.
Powered by Girl leverages girls’ engagement with social media and the Internet to connect with girls where they’re spending so much time already, engaging them in new media literacies and activism. It’s unique because it works on many levels. We invite girls into the PBG community that girl activists have created and we offer a range of ways for them to connect, to be involved, and to make social change. Most girls will simply see and share a spoofed ad, read a blog post, or vote on an activity they like. They will have opportunities to participate in a social movement and learn in the process that social critique and girls’ activism is both fun and vitally important.
Do you have a patent for this idea?
No
Impact
This Entry is about (Issues)
What impact have you had?
Hardy Girls Healthy Women (HGHW) is a non-profit organization committed to changing the culture in which girls are growing. We connect girls with the people and resources that help them transform their surroundings into safe havens and we empower girls with knowledge, critical thinking skills, and a platform for activism. As an organization, we have spent the last ten years finding out what happens when you listen to girls and take them seriously, when you empower them instead of treating them like victims, and when you work side by side with them to challenge the cultural narrative that pits girls against one another, promotes unrealistic body and beauty ideals, and sexualizes girls from a very young age. Our programs and resources are utilized in 38 states.
Powered by Girl’s target audience is teen girls aged 14-18. We have been working with girls and young women from the U.S. and Canada for the past 8 months to name the campaign, design the logo, develop both online and on-the-ground activities, and create content for the website once it launches. Right now a diverse collection of girls and young women from the US and Canada are testing out and contributing to content for the launch of the public site. Girls are writing and responding to blog content, marking up advertisements with witty, satiric commentary and adding dialogue boxes and captions to print ads with the “That’s What She Says” and “PBG this ad” tools they have dreamed up.
Problem
Research tells us that a steady diet of media has a negative impact on girls' health and development. The disconnect between what’s real and what’s media-generated can trigger a range of risky behaviors in girls including self-harm, disordered eating, substance abuse, and suicide.
In the last 10 years, media literacy programs have popped up all over the country, designed to help girls understand that images are digitally enhanced, and not real. But mostly these programs take a protectionist approach, and as a result they can unintentionally disempower girls (Kearney, 2006; Bay-Cheng and Lewis, 2006). Informing girls that media ideals are predicated on phony, computer-enhanced images, is not only lost in the 5,000+ media images girls encounter each day, but such an approach can also backfire (Wheeler, 2009). The risk of imparting this information as a one-time shot is that girls may take away from it the motivation to learn how to manipulate media in order to maintain the status quo — Photoshopping their own Facebook profile pictures, for example.
Powered by Girl will engage girls to be part of the solution rather than to protect them from the problem.
Actions
For the last 8 months, we have been working to catalyze a girl-powered media movement driven by a coalition of sister organizations, uses, and most importantly, girls. That coalition now consists of girls, more than 50 girl-serving organizations across the US and Canada, media and girl experts, researchers, bloggers, and journalists. The website construction is underway while a select group of girl activists are generating content, testing out tools, and connecting with one another on a beta site.
To raise awareness and to promote HGHW’s approach to working in partnership with girls, HGHW and girls from PBG are working with Women’s Media Center, TrueChild, ASAP Initiative at Hunter College, and the Ms. Foundation to organize a national summit challenging the sexualization of girls. Called SPARK (Sexualization Protest: Action Resistance Knowledge), it will be an in-person and virtual summit, thereby engaging thousands of girls and adults across the US and Canada.
Results
• PBG-affiliated girls’ organizations will be more committed to girls’ activism as a component of media literacy work
• Orgs will recognize girls as co-leaders in social change work, as demonstrated by increased youth leadership
• PBG girls will have a better understanding of media activism and how to use social media to effect change
• Girls will participate in girl- and organization-initiated calls to action hosted on PBG site
The answer to media saturation is not censorship or over-protection. A media literacy movement must appeal not only to girls’ love of satire but also to their keen sense of justice and fairness. Because what we’ve found, without fail, is that when girls are given the opportunity, they will demand something that better reflects their own realities – more diverse bodies, abilities, and interests.
What will it take for your project to be successful over the next three years? Please address each year separately, if possible.
1st Year Timeline:
•Audience development, vetting of content for PBG Ning and Facebook fan page – ongoing
•Design, development, and launch of PBG website and Facebook fan page - July 1st
•Unveil PBG Campaign at Sexualization of Girls in Media Summit -- October 2010
Anticipated outcomes that would mark this project a success include:
•Content generated for one year of “What the Blank” blogs
•1,000 girls will participate in PBG calls to action
•A diverse coalition of more than 200 likely and unlikely organizations and thought leaders supporting girls’ media literacy and activism
•A diverse group of more than 10,000 teen girl users active in the PBG community
•At least 2,500 user-generated PBG or TWSS images will be uploaded and circulated in the PBG community
Within one year, we will work to catalyze and support a girl-powered media movement with a coalition of sister organizations, muses, and most importantly girls in order to instigate awareness, spark activism, and ultimately contribute and transform the landscape of girls’ media to one that reflects more realistic and healthy media representations of girls and women.
In years 2 and 3 we will work to grow our impact by building the size of our Powered by Girl community of girl activists and collaborating organizations. The PBG bloggers will be seen as experts on girls’ views of the media, a comment source for TV, print, and online content around girls’ activism. Our PBG community will initiate and support actions to call attention to the good and bad in the media, including a top ten list of the best and worst, an annual Intervene on Halloween fashion show with the tagline “We’re Bringing Scary Back”, and eventually a PBG book that will capture the best of the blogs and actions in one place.
What would prevent your project from being a success?
For us at Hardy Girls, one of our biggest challenges remains keeping the issue of girls’ equality, safety, and independence on the radar of the general public. There are some alarming statistics that shape girls’ and women’s realities today. Ranging from eating disorders to the media’s increasing sexualization of young girls to violence against girls and women, the spectrum of damaging factors is wide. It’s a landscape riddled with messages that narrowly define who girls are supposed to be and that severely limit their potential. Living, breathing girls barely recognize themselves in this landscape and research tells us that a steady diet of sensationalized media and societal messages about gender has a negative impact on girls’ health and development. Conversely, studies indicate that girls who learn to think critically about femininity and gender stereotypes prevalent in the media are more likely to be in genuine, healthy relationships with others, to challenge negative stereotypes of girls and women, to be more accepting of their own bodies, and to have higher self-esteem and lower depression rates.
The immense amount of damaging messages that girls are forced to wade through on a regular basis and a lack of an arena in which to counteract them would negatively affect HGHW programming, including Powered by Girl. A lack of funding, of course, would also prevent Powered by Girl from reaching the vast audience and network that we envision for it.
How many people will your project serve annually?
More than 10,000
What is the average monthly household income in your target community, in US Dollars?
$1000 - 4000
Does your project seek to have an impact on public policy?
No
Sustainability
What stage is your project in?
Operating for less than a year
Is your organization a
Non‐profit/NGO/citizen sector organization
Is your initiative connected to an established organization?
Yes
If yes, provide organization name.
Hardy Girls Healthy Women
How long has this organization been operating?
More than 5 years
Does your organization have a Board of Directors or an Advisory Board?
Yes
Does your organization have a non-monetary partnerships with NGOs?
Yes
Does your organization have a non-monetary partnerships with businesses?
No
Does your organization have a non-monetary partnerships with government?
No
Please tell us more about how these partnerships are critical to the success of your innovation.
By our very nature, HGHW’s success hinges on collaboration. The success of the Powered by Girl campaign relies on the broad coalition of girls, activists, researchers, bloggers, and girl-serving organizations who have a stake in broadening the definition of what it means to be a girl and who have committed activities, programs, time, and their girls to the effort, including the Women’s Media Center, New Moon Girl Media, True Child, Project Girl and About-Face. Hardy Girls has built this coalition over the past nine months in order to reach and support girls. We’ll feature these organizations and the work they’re doing with girls on the PBG site in order to showcase their activities and resources for girls and we’ll leverage these sister organizations’ girl membership to grow the PBG community of girl activists and muses, and circulate the content created by PBG members.
To date our coalition represents more than fifty organizations, researchers, bloggers, and activists, including Gail Dines, Sharon Lamb, Jessica Henderson Daniel, Jean Kilbourne, Jin In, Deborah Tolman, Janie Ward, Rachel Simmons, and Carol Gilligan.
What are the three most important actions needed to grow your initiative or organization?
The multi-platformed campaign consists of the following pieces:
1) PBG’s beta Ning site is the campaign’s nerve center, where girls work together to create content for the campaign and where new activities and ideas are incubated before public launch. Girls interested in working in coalition with other girl activists to generate new ideas and activities for the public PBG sites are invited into this monitored site.
Girls now on the beta site have been identified by sister organizations and campaign supporters and invited in. We will continue to reach girls this way until the PBG website and Facebook fan page are developed and public, at which point we can encourage interested girls to join the site and help develop content. Girls will be moved to action both by the fun of interacting with other girls and by the possibility of having their ideas, blogs, etc. featured on the website.
2) PBG Facebook Fan page is an open forum for girls to post spoofed ads, develop themed albums, and communicate with other interested girls.
3) PBG Website will host Ning site-tested content and activities. Working with a digital strategist, we have created a site wireframe that is simple, direct, and fun. Girls can come and go quickly—they can spoof/caption an ad or vote on their favorite spoof, comment on a blog post, watch a short video, and share anything of interest through their social networking site. Each week a What the….!? Blog will feature some aspect of girl targeted media (e.g., What the Pink?! What the Skinny?!), breaking it down, inviting commentary, and offering tools and activist ideas for protest, as well as informing girls about existing actions. The site will also feature a sister org or media activist/action of the week.
The Story
What was the defining moment that you led to this innovation?
"Beginning with my doctoral work at the Harvard Project on Women’s Psychology and Girls’ Development in the early 1990’s, I have listened to girls and learned much from them. Our goal then was to provide the means for girls to give voice to their thoughts and feelings and to trace girls’ development from childhood to adolescence. We never set out to worry about or fix girls. We set out to listen to them. As such, we developed approaches and methods designed to free up and legitimize space for girls’ voices. While popular books on adolescent girls were touting girls’ low self-esteem, we wrote about the lively curiosity and disruptive behavior of younger girls, we observed the resistance of girls on the brink of adolescence, and we experienced the political potential of all of it. In what has become the two prevailing discourses about girlhood --“crisis” and “girl power” we heard girls negotiate the pathways between them, and we encouraged women to join girls in their insights, to create spaces for girls to develop their own complex, strong selves.
After 20 years of studying girls, I wanted to start an organization where I could put this theory about voice, about giving girls more power and control in their lives, into action. Hardy Girls Healthy Women is based on the health psychology notion of resilience called “hardiness,” and is designed to give girls the tools and resources they need to become stronger in the face of life stresses by connecting them with the adults in their communities, by giving them choices and opportunities, and by providing them with alternatives in responding to their world. Our goal is to provide the scaffolding for girls so they can be cultural change agents.
Hardy Girls competes with programs that worry about girls’ low-self esteem and body image, that tout fun, fashion, and shopping to attract girls to their websites and programs. Of course, any effort to engage girls has to take their love of popular culture seriously and the clever ways marketers shape girls’ desire for love, happiness, visibility and power. But too often we underestimate what girls really want and their capacity to see their vision realized. Through Powered By Girl, Hardy Girls opens up the space and provides the skills and resources for girls to do social justice work, to create change, and to have a little fun, too."
Tell us about the social innovator behind this idea.
Lyn Mikel Brown Ed. D. is a mom, professor, and community activist. She is Professor of Education and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Colby College in Waterville, Maine and co-creator of Hardy Girls Healthy Women. She writes extensively and lectures around the country on the relational life of girls; the influences of race, class and gender on girls' lives; girls' feelings of anger, self-knowledge, loss, hope, and desire. She is the author of four books, including Meeting at the Crossroads: Women's Psychology and Girls' Development (co-authored with Carol Gilligan and also the 1992 New York Times Notable Book of the Year), and most recently Packaging Girlhood: Rescuing Our Daughters From Marketer's Schemes (co-authored with Sharon Lamb and a 2006 Books For A Better Life Award winner).
She has been an American Association of University Women Educational Foundation Scholar-in-Residence and a winner of a National Academy of Education Spencer Postdoctoral Fellowship for her research on girls. She is a member of the APA's Psychology of Women Executive Board and was a member of the APA's Task Force on Adolescent Girls. Lyn's acclaimed work on girls' social and psychological development has consistently broken new ground and challenged old perceptions. Her curricular materials proactively address concerns about girlfighting in schools across the nation.
How did you first hear about Changemakers?
Through another organization or company
If through another, please provide the name of the organization or company
Maine Philanthropy Center
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| American_Apparel_Best_Butt_Protest_Picture.jpg | 96.68 KB |
 | 93 weeks agoAllison Cole updated this Competition Entry. |
| 93 weeks agoAllison Cole submitted this idea. |
