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Girls and Legos – Oh My!

December 22, 2011 By

When you think of girls playing with Legos do you think of this?

Or this?

It's probably no surprise that I like the top image better!  And I wish I could say the same for Lego executives. In the next few days Lego will roll out brand new sets designed for girls ages 5 and up, with the theme, "Friends."  The sets were developed with four years (!) of research into what girls want from Legos. Some bloggers I love are trying to raise Lego's consciousness and I'm backing them up. Powered by Girl - PBG started the ball rolling. Supporters include  Pigtail Pals Reel Girl  Spark Summit.

My research was admittedly with a smaller sample. My daughters loved and played with Legos constantly back in the days before any "sets."  They built their own people from the basic red, green, blue & yellow pieces because we didn't have any people in our tub of pieces.  This led to people with wheels for feet and people of all shapes and sizes.

My point isn't to be nostalgic. Let's ask Lego to expand their vision of girls and their interests in the next round of sets they design for girls.

Just a suggestion, Lego:  Take the four girls from The 4th Motor team of Wisconsin who won the 2011 First Robotics Lego League North American open robotics challenge (1st all-girl team to win)!

One of the team shared some of their experiences and hard work in New Moon Girls' March-April 2011 magazine and on newmoon.com.  And here's some video of them winning the N.A. competition. All this, and a little herstory about the first computer programmer Ada Lovelace, encourages more girls to do creative problem-solving with Legos - inspiration, pure and simple.

This winning team of girls should lead development of Lego's next set for girls. I'm more than glad to help Lego learn out how to share power with girls in developing great products for them without reducing to lowest-common-denominator stereotypes.  It can be done and sustained, as we've done for nearly 20 years now.

What do you say Lego?

If you want to share this idea with Lego write to them and also post your letter here or on Facebook:

LEGO Systems, Inc.
555 Taylor Road
P.O. Box 1138
Enfield, CT 06083-1138
Filed Under: Communication, Creativity & Girls, Education & School, New Moon Girls News, Parents Who Advocate Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

Change Girls’ Sexualization in Media: Where to Start? Twitter Chat Dec 5 #girlsnow

December 1, 2011 By

Sexualization of girls in media is increasing. Parents want practical ways to counter the harmful effects. A Twitter chat Dec 5 – 8.30 pm cst #girlsnow will help. ABC-TV’s 20/20 called the segment “Too Young to Be Sexy?”  It focused on parents who sexualized their young daughters to help them compete in girls’ beauty pageants.

The segment included great comments from Dana Edell of Spark Summit – one of New Moon Girls’ sister organizations who support girls, young women and parents in fighting against the increasing sexualization of girls in media.

Sadly, the 20/20 segment stopped stop of talking about the solutions offered by a growing group of small businesses and non-profits including: American Psychological Association, Pigtail Pals, Shaping Youth, SheHeroes, Powered by Girl, Hardy Girls, Princess Free Zone,  Girls Inc., Geena Davis Institute, About-Face, Girl Scouts of the USA, and more.

So we’re going to help you with solutions!  Join us Dec 5 at 6.30 pm pst – 7.30 mst, 8.30 cst, 9.30 est for the #girlsnow twitter & blog chat on solutions that parents, teachers and youth workers can use every day.

We want to hear your solutions then, too!

Monday Dec 5  at 9.30 pm est/8.30 cst/7.30 mst/6.30 pst for a chat on Twitter. Follow hash tag  #girlsnow. Add it to the end of your tweets so we can see your question or comment. 

Before the chat  follow:

  • @Nancy_Newmoon
  • @PigtailPals
  • @BeABetterWoman
  • @AudreyBrashich
  • @DrRobyn

and others on the list below .

If you’re not on Twitter you can still participate live on my blog by clicking this sentence. We want to hear from you!

If you can’t make it live, the transcript will be available afterward at my blog.

My #GirlsNow c0-advocates are:

Amy Harman of Becoming A Better Woman

Dr. Robyn Silverman, author of Good Girls Don’t Get Fat

Melissa Wardy of Pigtail Pals

Audrey Brashich, author of All Made Up

More participants in this special chat are:

Amy Jussel, Founder of Shaping Youth, @shapingyouth

Lyn Mikel Brown, Professor, Colby College,  author of Packaging Girlhood, co-founder of SPARK and Hardy Girls Healthy Women, @lynmikel

Dana Edell,  @sparksummit

Megan Williams, Executive Director, Hardy Girls Healthy Women, @hghw

Jennifer Shewmaker, Professor, Abilene Christian University, @drjenshewmaker

Jennifer Berger, Founder of About-Face, @aboutfacesf

 

Filed Under: Communication, Daughters.com Enews, Health & Safety, New Moon Girls News, Parents Who Advocate Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Help win $1000 – $10,000 for New Moon Girls scholarships – donate just $10

November 15, 2011 By

On Give to the Max Day, Wednesday Nov. 16, you can do just that!

This special day for non-profits gives you the incredible opportunity to join with others and donate to our non-profit partner Mind on the Media to support the New Moon Girls scholarship fund. Our goal is supporting hundreds of girls with the power of positive media that New Moon Girls gives them.

Why is your gift so important on this day?

We donate many memberships to low-income girls. But the need is greater than our small organization can meet on its own. Your donation means that we won’t have to leave girls, schools and libraries starving for healthy media.  And for just $10 (or more!) on Give to the Max Day, you’ll get us that much closer to this goal!

Your gift will go further on Give to the Max Day! 

Your gift won’t only benefit our girls’ futures but it can also help:

1) Win a Golden Ticket! $1,000 will be given to a random donor’s charity every hour. You could be one of those 24 lucky donors!  At the end of the day one donor will be awarded a $10,000 Grand Prize Golden ticket donation for their charity – that could be YOU! Improve your odds of winning the Golden ticket in the following ways:

  • Night Owl? Give between 12am – 5am Central Standard Time on November 16 – in other time zones it will be earlier or later – check time zones at http://www.timezoneconverter.com/cgi-bin/tzc.tzc
  • Give multiple $10 donations at different hours throughout the day

2) We have a matching grant of $5000 on Give to the Max Day – that’s over 150 more scholarships for girls who otherwise would not have access to New Moon Girls. But we need your help to earn this match.

On Nov. 16, let’s give something back to our girls- positive media to inspire and empower them!  Let’s Give to the Max!

Thank You

Nancy Gruver, Founder

 

p.s. Win a Original Art Poster & Acclaim! If you inspire your friends to raise $500 as a group for NMG scholarships on Nov. 16, we will send you a beautiful Celebrate Girls poster with original artwork by Farah Aria. Plus we’ll feature a picture of you and your achievement in our e-news and on our web page! Click here now to set up your own campaign.

 

 

 

 

 

Filed Under: Creativity & Girls, Education & School, New Moon Girls News, Parents Who Advocate Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Be Body Positive August 7

August 7, 2011 By

It’s Body Positive Day. A day to be positive about our bodies. Just typing that, I realize that I need to make a conscious effort to be positive about my body and not just think critically about it.

A HUGE thanks for inventing this day to Connie Sobczak and Elizabeth Scott, LCSW, who founded the non-profit The Body Positive in 1996 because of their shared passion to help people cherish their bodies in order to lead healthier and more meaningful lives.

This is a day to love our bodies as part of ourselves. A day to love our bodies for what they can do and where they can take us. To love our bodies for themselves. A day to free ourselves from judging our reflection in a passing window based on the look or shape of our bodies. A day to consciously not judge others for the look or shape of their bodies. A day to let the word “fat” just be word like any other, not an insult. A day to free ourselves from the downward spiral quest to change our bodies to fit an inhuman look or shape. A day to feed the spark of inner energy that animates us, whatever that is.

A day to do things differently that I can continue tomorrow and the next day. One Body Positive day at a time.

I’m being body positive today by writing this quick post and doing some other work for a couple projects–completing them will feel great. Then I’m getting outside–where it’s finally cooler–and taking a walk by the Mississippi, listening to the flowing water and looking at the lush vegetation from this very rainy summer. Later I’m going to a play with friends at the Fringe Festival. After the play we’ll have a delicious dinner and visit while we eat.

What are you doing today to be body positive? Watch this short video to see what others are doing. Then please share so we can inspire each other – and spread the word!

Filed Under: Communication, Health & Safety, Parents Who Advocate Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Girl-Caught Sexualized Girls Swimsuit Marketing

July 12, 2011 By

This is a fan letter to Melissa Atkins Wardy of Pigtail Pals. Her blog on June 23  calling out sexualized images of girls used by Submarine Kids, a maker of swimsuits and other clothes for girls ages says it all:

Dear Deborah Soriano,

Yesterday I received a message from a reader of mine who had gotten an eblast from a company marketing your line of swimwear, with the tag line as being “kid-appropriate”. She was a little shocked, as was I, when we went to your website and found very young female models vamped up and posed provocatively in your Submarine swimwear line. Little girls do not wear wigs and make-up to the beach, nor does the way you have them posed come naturally to them. You have directly and willingly sexualized these young girls for your commercial purposes.As a mother of a young girl and a children’s apparel manufacturer myself, the photos on your website make me extremely uneasy. I personally find them to have crossed the line of appropriateness. While not illegal or pornographic, you certainly are playing up the pending sexuality of these little girls to sell your garments. Deborah, I find that repulsive.

Brava, Melissa, for standing up for all our girls!

I’m joining Melissa to fight back and send Submarine Kids the message that their exploitative marketing isGirl-Caught. Join us in copying the image from this post and

emailing it to:

deborah@submarineswim.com

or faxing it to:  305-931-9419

OR  print out your own Girl-Caught stickers and attach to a print-out of marketing you like or hate and send to the company.

Tell me what you use Girl-Caught on and watch for our major launch of the Girl-Caught campaign on Sept 22 – Day of the Girl.

 

Filed Under: Communication, Health & Safety, Parents Who Advocate Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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