Inspirational movies: Becoming Jane (2007)

Becoming Jane (2007) will entertain you and will give you the always needed push reminding how important independence and feminism is for well educated young ladies with ambitions. Also, it will remind you that a happy ending might not be what you imagined it to be.

And you may want to read a Jane Austen book after all.

Breaking stereotypes - not "for adults only" anymore..

A 13 year old can put many adults to shame with her eloquent, taboo free speech about breaking stereotypes, stopping discrimination and sexual liberation. Thumbs up to her for being an empowered young woman!

Be sure to check out her other videos as well, such as this one on Weight Issues Caused by the Media!

Inspirations.. the I♥BG E-book

It's finally here!

Inspirations is a collection of amazing stories from girls and young women about overcoming challenges, achieving their goals and challenging stereotypes. A big thank you to all who have shared their personal stories to help inspire others and to those who have been involved in the making of the e-book.

We hope you enjoy it!

a BIG thank you to all that made this project great..

The I❤BG project has officially ended, for now at least (but the blog will go on). With this occasion we would like to extend a BIG thank you to all who have been involved and contributed to the project. We couldn't have done it without you!

Here are a few of the many ways you helped our small project be a BIG success:

Since the launch of the I♥BG blog, we've had more than 7100 unique visitors from 109 different countries around the world.

You helped organize 11 I♥BG Tea-parties in 10 countries, where more than 120 young people participated in discussions on gender. 

You helped us create an amazing E-book filled with empowering stories which will help inspire others to overcome the challenges they face.

You helped us spread the word and empower girls and young women all over the world:

“It’s not about gender, it’s about you! You decide! Stigmatization, discrimination, they’re all there, they’ll always be, but it’s up to you to prove the world wrong, and more importantly, to prove yourself right.”

Participant in Romania

“There are numerous things which girls can feel proud of. But, important thing to understand and to realize is your inner strength. Rejoice every moment of life, developing such a spirit that would always make you think optimistic.”

Participant in Nepal

“There are many things that can be told about what it is like to be a girl. We are complicated, persistent and we always get what we want. But the secret is – sometimes finding out what we want is the hardest thing of all. But when a girl says "I love being a girl" - she means it, which is one of the few things she is sure of.”

Participant in Macedonia

You made us proud to present our project at more than 10 international events and meetings and helped us gain the support from many other youth networks and organisations.

So thank you for all your support and be sure to check the blog again soon. We promise we have a lot more in store for you.

girls + changes, or Holly dyed her hair...

"The myth of female frailty tells us that when a young woman starts exploring her dark side, she’s begun down a very dangerous road that could have life-damaging consequences. Obviously, if she starts shooting heroin, that’s true. But Holly — like so many other teen girls whose fascination with darkness is made manifest — isn’t doing anything life-threatening. She’s started reading Kerouac and Inga Muscio instead of Vogue and Seventeen, she’s getting showered and dressed and out of the house in less than half the time it took her a year before. This is healthy as can be — and yet it’s genuinely terrifying to many of the folks around her. Fed by a culture that falls all over itself with (often faux) expressions of concern about teen girls, many of her friends — and some of the adults in her life — are scared that Holly’s gonna “do something stupid now” and “ruin her life.”"

An excerpt from Hugo Schwyzer's inspirin blogpost Holly dyed her hair: more on myths of female frailty, our fear of women's anger, and what happens when the truth comes out

And as further reading I can certainly suggest Eve Ensler's book I Am an Emotional Creature

(as we all have seen the I ♥ Being a Girl video)

girls + toys

toys are for girls or boys playing

• How did we get here? by Princess Free Zone (2011-06-21)
• Lego is for girls by Brad Wieners at Bloomsberg Businessweek (2011-12-14)
• Lego and Dinsey are lazy by Princess Free Zone (2011-12-15)

Resilience!

Unbreakable is a very power art project that portrays rape survivors' strength after sexual abuse, aimed to break the silense surrounding rape and to shed light on the issue, and to remind to those whose innocence was stolen that they are never alone.There are "photo days" in US and Grace absolutely accepts submissions!

Media & Body Image

Although this is a Dove corporate responsibility add, it still makes a relevant point about where do our mental images of the perfect body come from...

As an additional reading, Real Women Have... Bodies by Hugo Schwyzer

Girls vs women in the workplace..

Caroline Drucker of SoundCloud offers a simple but empowering solution for getting more women in tech in her Ignite NYC 13 talk, How to Get More Women in Tech in Under a Minute. She suggest that by not using the word ‘girls’ to refer to ‘women’ that “there will be a lot more women (in tech) when we get rid of the "girls”.

Inspirational Characters: Tiffany Aching

Picture by Krewcia

...If it came to that, the book never gave you the evidence of anything. It talked about ‘a handsome prince’ . . . was he really, or was it just because he was a prince that people called him handsome? As for ‘a girl who was as beautiful as the day was long’ . . . well, which day? In midwinter it hardly ever got light! The stories didn’t want you to think, they just wanted you to believe what you were told...

. . .

Anyway, she preferred the witches to the smug handsome princes and especially to the stupid smirking princesses, who didn’t have the sense of a beetle. They had lovely golden hair, too, and Tiffany didn’t. Her hair was brown, plain brown. Her mother called it chestnut, or sometimes auburn, but Tiffany knew it was brown, brown, brown, just like her eyes. Brown as earth. And did the book have any adventures for people who had brown eyes and brown hair? No, no, no . . . it was the blond people with blue eyes and the redheads with green eyes who got the stories. If you had brown hair you were probably just a servant or a woodcutter or something. Or a dairymaid. Well, that was not going to happen, even if she was good at cheese. She couldn’t be the prince, and she’d never be a princess, and she didn’t want to be a woodcutter, so she’d be the witch and know things, just like Granny Aching—

The Wee Free Men by Sir Terry Pratchett

Tiffany Aching is a fictional character in Terry Pratchett's satirical Discworld series of fantasy novels. She is the protagonist in 4 of his books in which she grows from nine-year old to a girl of sixteen in the last published book. Her stories often parallel mythic heroes' quests, but also deal with Tiffany's difficulties as a young girl maturing into a responsible woman. During the course of the series Tiffany grows to be a witch, however her powers are rather cognitive than magical. She possesses First Sight, the ability to see 'what is really there' (as opposed to Second sight, which shows people what they think ought to be there) and Second Thoughts, which are defined as 'the thoughts you think about the way you think'. As a witch and a young woman, she often faces stereotypes, prejudice and social pressure but always keeps determined to stand her ground and fight injustice.