Sisters in Beauty Rebellion!
Long before Oprah's Beauty Revolution
and Dove's Campaign for Real Beauty, many smaller organizations
and inspired individuals have been hard at work on the frontlines
to help shift cultural attitudes towards beauty!
Most of us just don't have the marketing resources of a large corporation
like Unilever (Dove's parent company) or those of Oprah to make
ourselves known to the world.
We believe in supporting each other in our common mission, so EWP & The
Dressing Room Project would like to honor our Sisters in Beauty
Rebellion!
You'd Be So Pretty If... - Dara Chadwick
Dara
Chadwick is a freelance journalist, mother and activist working to
boost body image in the next generation of women.
She says, "I grew up listening to my mom bemoan everything
from the size of her thighs to the shape of her eyes. So you can
imagine my dismay the first time someone exclaimed, 'You look just
like your mother!' "
Inspired to try and help other mothers find ways of encouraging their
daughters to feel good about their bodies, Dara wrote a book which
will be available in May of 2009 called
You'd Be So Pretty If...:
Teaching Our Daughters to Love Their Bodies -- Even When We Don't
Love Our Own.
For more about Dara and her upcoming book, check out
http://www.youdbesoprettyif.com
See all of our Sisters in Beauty
Rebellion honorees
StickerSisters.com - Ariel Fox
StickerSisters.com strives
to empower girls around the world through stickers, shoelaces, magnets, and
other products with girl-positive messages.
Creator Ariel Fox says, "I started Sticker Sisters at the end of eighth
grade after the worst year of my life. Middle school can be a breeding ground
for cliques and back-stabbing. After completing those horrible years, I decided
I wanted to do something to help girls feel better about themselves."
See all
of our Sisters in Beauty Rebellion honorees
hangPROUD.com - Diane Prefontaine and Carla Alpert
hangPROUD.com is an exclusive place where
girls and women can connect to find inspiration, build friendships and learn how to refocus their inner dialog to live a powerful and meaningful life.
Co-founders Diane Prefontaine (left) and Carla Alpert (right) founded PROUD Girls Inc. in March 2007 because of their shared passion and mission to change the lives of girls and women across the globe.
They encourage women to embrace their unique beauty and individual strengths and to use their power to make significant differences in their lives, communities and the world.
The site offers a MySpace-style community complete with their unique PROUDradio feature where members can create playlists and listen to tunes as they interact. (Dressing Room Project founder, Mimi Kates is among the musicians featured and hangPROUD also recently published an
illuminating article about her.)
Dancing from the Heart - Jo Cobbett and Colleen
Perry
Dancing
from the Heart classes are the combined effort of Jo Cobbett
and Colleen Perry in Santa Monica, California. Using dance and
writing, they help women to rediscover their bodies "as the
source of divine pleasure."
Jo Cobbett has been leading groups in Los Angeles and around the
world since 1995. Trained in a variety of therapeutic modalities,
her passion is creative expression and she offers weekly "ecstatic
dance" classes.
Colleen Perry is a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist whose mission
is to care for, nurture, and enhance the self worth of women. She
envisions a world where women feel joyful about living their lives
knowing that their beauty and power lies within.
Demandit.org
- Bethany Brownholtz
Bethany Brownholtz is a young woman committed to discouraging the objectification
of women in advertising and helping connect concerned activists. She created
this social change web site when she was a college student. Her tag line is "Demand
Reality. Demand Respect."
On "Bethany's Blacklist" she offers examples of particularly disrespectful
advertisements with a link underneath each to contact the company responsible
and let them know what you think.
"I feel that our culture has gone too far. I've had it with sexually explicit
ads saturated with pressures to be thin and to be conventionally beautiful",
says Bethany. "We need to think about the implications of these images for
women, and men too. Media literacy is so important. Media is everywhere and we
need to learn to be discerning."
Warning: Some material on this
site may be shocking or offensive. The selected advertisements
are intended to make us think and to initiate discussion
and social change action. Not recommended for those under
the age of 13 (although most featured ads have appeared
in readily accessible magazines or in public places.)
Love Your Body Show - Sara Yates
Sara Yates is an artist
who created the Love
Your Body Show celebrating body
diversity. She says expressive art helped her to heal
from anorexia. Sara is now compiling a book of artwork
and writing called Making
Peace with the Body and is
accepting submissions.
The Doll Project
Here's an inspired pilot program we support: The Doll
Project is a Barbie makeover program designed to promote
girls' self exploration and self expression.
Under the guidance of The Doll Project creator, Denise
DiJoseph, girls will have the opportunity to use art materials
to recreate donated Barbie dolls in a way that reflects
who they are.
Denise, an artist and concerned
activist, says The Doll Project is "an empowerment
program to show the girls how to be uniquely individual
and not a carbon copy of the idealistic image."
Her first programs in September '08 will be offered free
to girls in homeless shelters.
Want to help? Mail your unwanted Barbies IN ANY CONDITION
to:
Denise DiJoseph
The Doll Project
3 Ravine Road
Frazer, PA 19355-1941
Tell her the folks at The Dressing Room Project sent you!
