Melissa Atkins Wardy - Redefining girly: how parents can fight the stereotyping and sexualizing of girlhood, from birth to tween

Copyright 2014 by Melissa Atkins Wardy

All rights reserved

Foreword 2014 by Jennifer Siebel Newsom

All rights reserved First edition

Published by Chicago Review Press, Incorporated

814 North Franklin Street

Chicago, Illinois 60610

ISBN 978-1-61374-552-6

Interior design: PerfecType, Nashville, TN

Cover design: Natalya Balnova

Cover photo: Emely/Cultura/Getty Images

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Wardy, Melissa Atkins.

Redefining girly : how parents can fight the stereotyping and sexualizing of girlhood, from birth to tween / Melissa Atkins Wardy ; foreword by Jennifer Siebel Newsom.

pages cm

Summary: Containing practical, specific parenting advice; strategies for effecting change with educators, store managers, corporations, and more; and tips for challenging and changing the media, this essential guide gives parents the tools they need to fight back against the modern stereotyping and sexualization of young girls. Activist Melissa Wardy shares tangible advice for getting young girls to start thinking critically about sexed-up toys and clothes while also talking to girls about body image issues. She provides tips for creating a home full of diverse, inspiring toys and media free of gender stereotypes, using consumer power to fight companies that make such major missteps, and taking the reins to limit, challenge, and change the harmful media and products bombarding girls. Redefining Girly provides specific parenting strategies, templates, and sample conversations and includes letters from some of the leading experts in education, psychology, child development, and girls advocacy Provided by publisher.

Summary: This essential guide gives parents the tools they need to fight back against the modern stereotyping and sexualization of young girls Provided by publisher.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-61374-552-6 (pbk.)

1. Girls. 2. GirlsPsychology. 3. Stereotypes (Social psychology) 4. Sex role in children. 5. Child rearing. I. Title.

HQ777.W374 2014

305.23082dc23

2013029063

Printed in the United States of America

5 4 3 2 1

This book is dedicated to the girls, big and small, who are waiting for the world to see just how smart, daring, and adventurous they are.

Closest to my heartthis book is for Amelia and Benny, my little loves and endless mischief makers. And to Clara Grace, Madeline, and Alexander: wherever you are in the world, I love you.

The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity.

Amelia Earhart

T his book, Redefining Girly by Melissa Atkins Wardy, is a godsend to parents. As the mother of a young girl, a young boy, and a newborn girl, I am, like Melissa, frustrated, agitated, and overwhelmed by the power marketers hold over our culture and the way in which they bombard us with limiting and very dangerous notions of what it means to be a girl and what it means to be a boy today.

Melissas reasoning for writing this guide mirrors many of the reasons I made the film Miss Representation and remain committed to creating films and social-action campaigns that shift individual and community consciousness, and in turn prompt action.

Melissa and I both agree that todays media are sending a very dangerous message that womens and girls value and power lie in their sexuality and not in their capacity as leaders. This only reinforces and adds to the unconscious sexism and bias toward women in our culture that prevents women from realizing their full human potential.

When I first realized I was pregnant with a girl, I was terrified by the thought of raising a daughter in a culture that so regularly demeans, degrades, and disrespects women and girls. As I set out to make Miss Representation, it became increasingly clear how pervasive both the objectification and self-objectification of women had become in our society. From the hypersexualized images girls see in advertising to the limited spectrum of professional women seen on-screen in television and film, mainstream media provide very little inspiration for our daughters. Marketers have so bifurcated gender in order to push more products to Americas families that they are selling our kids a bill of limited goods. Our young girls, right out of the womb, are sold the notion that their value lies in their youth, their beauty, and their sexuality, while their brothers and male peers are taught early on that boys are our natural-born leaders and that domination, control, and aggression can be utilized to preserve the status quo.

The situation is dire! The media is pressuring our girls at younger and younger ages to conform to a warped and hypersexualized version of girlhood and womanhood. As a consequence, we see unprecedented rates of low self-esteem issues and serious health problems such as eating disorders, anxiety, depression, drug and alcohol abuse, cutting, bullying, and suicide attempts, further prohibiting girls from becoming leaders.

Its rather hypocritical, isnt it, that we tell our daughters and future generations that they can be whatever they want to be when they grow up, when in fact the media and therefore our greater culture limits women in so many ways? Given these barriers to entry, its no wonder that we culturally accept that a man in leadership is more valuable than a woman. This can be noted generally, with womens leadership peaking at 18 percent representation in business, politics, military, religion, media, culture, and entertainmentsomething that is easily forgotten when one woman makes it to the top. So women might be 51 percent of the population, and give birth to 100 percent of the population, but they remain underrepresented in leadership across the board.

Miss Representation and MissRepresentation.org are my attempts to right this wrong and put our culture on a path that recognizes, empowers, and inspires women and girls to realize their dreams. Women and girls must no longer be portrayed as second-class citizens but rather as equals to men and boys, with the same opportunities to succeed in life.

But we cannot do this work alone! We need parents, families, and communities to stand up and take notice of the major public-health crisis on our hands. It starts with shifting family consumer habits. For example, lets choose dolls for our girls that have realistic body shapes and healthy aspirations, such as Go! Go! Sports Girls; lets encourage them to play with stuffed animals, which are great tools for modeling relationships and practicing nurturing, something that all kids like to role-play; and finally, how about giving a second thought to the corporate marketing-driven princess culture?! Why do all our little girls dream of being princesses? Because Disney tells them to! As my friend Geena Davis says, Being a princess is a nice job if you can get it! But think about it: the word princess reeks of privilege, entitlement, and someone out of touch with the real world. A princesss sole purpose in life is to be pretty enough to attract the attention of a male suitora knight in shining armor on a white horsewho will rescue her and take care of her. She is never required to hold a job. Sure, childhood is a time for make-believe, but do these retrograde messages make sense in an era when well over half of all adult women work outside the home?