Friday is the (Inspirational) Movie Night: Tangled (2010)

#inspirationalmovies

Yes, I admit a weakness for well done mainstream stuff for children. 'Cause they are the future, you know! If they get decent stuff to watch, maybe we won't be doomed as species. At least not that soon... Anyways, Disney's most recent version of the Rapunzel story - Tangled (2010) - could be considered their test of waters for a (somewhat) new kind of princess (this is before Frozen (2013), keep in mind, and before Brave (2012)).

While far from Disney's most interesting takes on (quite) feminist princesses - think Mulan or Merida - there's a lot to take out from this Rapunzel.

Lesson 1: A sign of personal maturity is to be able to overcome the limits your guardians have set if you feel that something from beyond those is calling you. Obedience is not by default the best choice. Your safe home may turn out to be a secluded tower with no exit. And you may have to jump to get out of it.

Lesson 2: Be ready to use force and cunning when in danger. Obvious, but not very princessy. Real world stuff.

Lesson3: Authenticity is better quest for perfection. Following what just feels right might give you a (messy) prince and a kingdom queendom. Or just make you happy.

I ♥ Being a Girl people, meet the press: Maya (YSAFE SC) ♥ Being a Girl

We're going back to our roots, both I ♥ Being a Girl and IPPF wise, and exploring our own experiences. And you deserve to meet the people behind, anyways.

So, here it goes!

Name: Maya Koumanova  

Things I enjoy doing:
- travel
- dance
- have challenging/funny arguments with friends 
 

I became aware of sexual and reproductive health and rights by growing up with it. Different issues that would disturbed me, gradually became clear and full of meaning once at the age of 14 I took interest in my sister’s voluntary work for IPPF. I got magnified by its power and have subsequently took it up myself. Since then my knowledge and interest in SRHR has deepened, and now it has become inseparable part of my worldview and experience of the world.  Meeting so many amazing people through my work and hearing their stories has been the biggest driver and source of inspiration.

The world would be a better place if everybody would: 

- Watch Carl Sagan’s "Cosmos" and The Joy Luck Club, a movie after Amy Tan’s novel by the same name  about human relationships and interaction, generational change, the evolving roles and lives of women.

- Listen good old Irish music and from time to time Stephen Fry pod-casts (I know it is not exactly music, but one can drown in them)  
- Read more history/science/sociology books so we can grow as a society and probably the classic  1984, scary but brilliant book which can encourage critical thinking and more thought on where we want our society to go.

Before I'm 80, I want to have  learn how to play an instrument, visit Australia, learn how to make awesome home-made ice-cream and have a happy family.

Learning to be a princess, or what?

Going on with the (critical) princess-talk, here we have the ground-breaking US Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor giving career advice on Sesame Street.

While we are most grateful to Sesame Street for giving conscious life-lessons to smaller people, the question to what to do with "girl sections" recognizable from afar by the bright pink and all the other consumer goods that princessize people remains.

Do you assume that the best way to limit their influence is to forbid or to be "optimistic, perhaps overly so, about our daughters' ability to leave the less healthy lessons of princess culture behind as they age," accepting that "the risk in fighting an (almost inevitably unsuccessful) battle against princess culture is the false hope it gives that a de-Disneyed daughter will be a more empowered one" as Hugo Schwyzer does?

(This is not only about small children. Feel free, go on and recount all the wacky ideas about love, friendship, good, beauty and hair that Disney has planted in your own head...)

And as a piece of advice to bigger girls, here is Elizabeth Wurtzel with her own very sober career advice:

"Somewhere between childbirth and a no-fault divorce, a lot of smart women have chosen to engage in some risky behavior. Opting out is not a feminist choice. It's mostly just a bad idea." 

WSYA Power 2 Women: GotStared.at / Saransh

As you should know by now, I ♥ Being a Girl received one of the 2012 World Summit Youth Awards. The award showcases the best ICT solutions made by young people that moves us closer to achieving the MDGs. Ours is - obviously - in the category Power to Women.

As we are far from being the only ones doing things around gender via the internets and such, here you have some more:   

Saransh Dua, @SaranshDua and GotStared.At

I enjoy spending time with family and friends, reading, and traveling.

GotStared.At has grown a lot as a campaign in terms of the core idea behind the movement. Now it is a movement that aims to create a counter culture amongst the people in our society where respecting the other gender would be considered cool.

Over history it has been realized that certain trends tend to catch the fancy of the common man. AIDS awareness, education for the poor, green energies, etc. are examples of causes which, obviously being quite relevant, managed to gain wide spread public support in India when compared to many other pertinent issues as well. We aim to create something similar with the idea of gender as the central theme.

For too long the idea of gender debates, discussions have been a talk amongst the elitist in India. This needs to be converted into a discussion amongst the masses and we aim to do just that. We are all about simplification of complex issues which the public tend to shy away from discussing simply because of the jargon used in the messages sent to the public or the fact that in the age of twitter and face book people tend to be drawn more towards graphic driven content. We create posters and other visualizations portraying complex issues in the common mans parlance. The result of this is that rather than people tuning into what maybe a few experts have to say, to tune into what their community has to say and engage with them on the online platforms provided by us.

 

The idea behind #itsnotherfault came out at a time when most of the public in India was extremely hassled over the widespread assumptions that the girls who were getting molested on the street of India were the ones who were asking for it. This meant that the short clothes and bar hopping lifestyles were causing a rise in the “testosterone” levels of the Indian male and the poor guys had no option but to sexually harass the women as she was apparently “asking for it”.

So the site GotStared.At was initially developed by Dhruv as a place to come in and post what they were wearing while they were harassed. This led to a tremendous amount of virality as it was tackling a very pertinent issue of victim bashing as described above.
People from all over the world started posting pictures of the clothes that they were wearing when harassed and the flow of entries still hasn’t stopped as everyday there is more proof of the fact that no matter where you are, the only thing that will cause the harassment is the perpetrator and his intentions and nothing else.

The world would be a better place if everybody would:
  - See something new every week.
  - Listen to The Beatles, Pink Floyd and the list goes on...
  - Read The Story of My Experiments with Truth, Poor Economics, Think, The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid.
  - Try being genuine and humane.

Before I'm 80, I'd like to... travel the world.

IPPF ♥ - YSAFE SC - Thomas

Name: Thomas Goyvaerts, member of the YSAFE Steering Committee.

I enjoy taking challenges, traveling and going out with friends.

I became aware by being active in the social circuit since I was 15. Every opportunity or challenge I faced helped me grow and helped me get more aware about all kinds of social topics that were now to me. For example, right now I'm doing an internship with male sex workers, something I recently learned about and immediately wanted to know some more.

I joined my IPPF Member Association, Sensoa, because to me it was one step up in the whole social staircase; I tend to travel a lot between organizations so to learn and grow even more.

The world would be a better place if everybody would:
   - See a starry midnight sky in the mountains to make you feel small, the view from a high mountaintop to make you feel big and the look of love in that one special person's eyes just so you really know how special you are. If you can do this and be happy with yourself, you can face any storm.
  - Listen Everybody's free to wear sunscreen by Baz Luhrman.
  - Read the stuff you wrote when you were young; love letters, diaries, school reports, cards, letters... So you can see how you've grown, see what possibilities you had but didn't know about and realize that you still have so many possibilities right now that you don't know about.
  - Try many new directions, and if they don't turn out to be like you wanted then at least you made one step in the right direction.

Before I'm 80 I want to have traveled a lot, I want to be able to say that I found true love (even if I lost it by then) & I want to be proud of who I am and stick by it for the rest of my life.

I ♥ Being a Girl people, meet the press: Magnhild ♥ Being a Girl

We're going back to our roots, both I ♥ Being a Girl and IPPF wise, and exploring our own experiences. And you deserve to meet the people behind, anyways.
So, here it goes!

Name: Magnhild Bogseth (aka Mag, Maga, Aymara, Misa, Mags or M), @maggsis

Things I enjoy doing:
  - Learning languages by talking to people at the street,
  - Debating world problems with smart people who can provoke and produce new ideas and visions,
  - Getting to know the world through traveling, eating new food and reading books

I became aware of the importance of comprehensive and reality based sexual education when I as an exchange student in high school received sexual education as a cartoon show, where the girl ended up with going to hell because she had sex with her boyfriend after drinking a beer.

The world would be a better place if everyone would:
  - Watch the movie Pay it Forward (2000) and actually do it in real life. And watch Milk (2008), and Pippi Longstocking (1969), of course!
  - Listen to Everybody’s Free by Quindon Tarver and follow his advice.
  - Read the biography of Martin Luther King and get inspired.

Before I’m 80 I want to speak at least 6 languages, be relatively good at surfing and have made the wonderful persons I have in my life happy in one way or another.

International Day of the Girl Child

On the 11 October 2012 the United Nations and the world celebrate the International Day of the Girl Child to recognize girls’ rights and the unique challenges girls face around the world. This year´s activities focus on ending child marriag.

¨Child marriage denies a girl of her childhood, disrupts her education, limits her opportunities, increases her risk to be a victim of violence and abuse, jeopardizes her health and therefore constitutes an obstacle to the achievement of nearly every Millennium Development Goal (MDG) and the development of healthy communities.¨

Child Marriage is an ultimate robbery in a girl´s life.

The IHBG project aims to see generations of young girls filled with dreams and hopes, able to learn and chose their path, able to make decisions, take changes and fully enjoy life.Girls who aspire!

That is why today we asked girls about their childhood dreams.

And what did you want to become when you were a child?

 

Speciall thanks for our lovely participants: Priyanka, Chen, Kaitlin, Silvia, Paola, Mirela, Pilar, Julia, Anna, Laura, Eva, Judith, Christina, Anna, Georgina, Carol and Christina 

Girls & Education (Katarína)

Katarína shares with us a "fun and positive and old song" called When I'll Be a Teacher One Day (Až raz budem učitelkou) sung by Dara Rolins, now a very famous Slovak pop-star.

"There will be a lot of singing, singing everywhere
I will teach the teachers how to sing “weeee”
In the classes of singing, singing, singing
Everyone will have to know every HIT

An when we will finish with the singing,
I will start examining in those grammar exceptions,
And large multiplication tables
So they won’t think
That I’m just like any teacher."