What happens when you click on a Facebook link, then work backwards clicking on links in various blog posts? You find yourself thinking about things that hadn’t crossed your mind in a long time – like marketing and stereotypes and what we’re teaching kids.
Here’s a picture comparison of current magazines at a county library, posted originally on Facebook:
Just what is that telling our girls?
As writer Michele Yulo said at Women You Should Know, “You can read the copy and pretty much figure out that according to this magazine—a girl’s top priority is to “Wake Up Pretty”, and a boy’s is to “Explore Your Future.”
A colleague of hers, graphic designer Katherine Young, was just as appalled. So Ms. Young re-did the Girls’ Life cover to encourage girls in things far more important and life-altering than hair and fashion. (The new cover girl is Olivia Hallisey, who won the Google Science Fair Grand Prize last year.)
Isn’t this awesome? What a world we could build if we focused girls on dreams, goal-setting, healthy bodies, service and scholarship! Kudos to these women for spreading the word, once again, that we must straighten out our priorities.
For those of us who are small cogs in society’s big machine, what are we doing? What messages are we giving our girls in our conversations and our expectations? What magazines do we get for our daughters and granddaughters?
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