Redefining Girly

“Melissa Wardy’s book reads like a conversation with a smart, wise, funny friend; one who dispenses fabulous advice on raising a strong, healthy, full-of-awesome girl.” —Peggy Orenstein, author of Cinderella Ate My Daughter All-pink aisles in toy stores, popular dolls that resemble pole dancers, ultrasexy Halloween costumes in tween sizes. Many parents are increasingly startled and unnerved at how today’s media, marketers, and manufacturers are sexualizing and stereotyping ever-younger girls, but feel powerless to do much about it. Mother of two Melissa Wardy channeled her feelings of isolation and frustration into activism—creating a website to sell T-shirts with girl-positive messages; blogging and swapping parenting strategies with families around the world; writing letters to corporate offenders; organizing petitions; and raising awareness through parent workshops and social media. Wardy has spearheaded campaigns against national brands and retailers that resulted in the removal of sexist, offensive ads and products. Now, in Redefining Girly, she shares her parenting and activism strategies with other families concerned about raising a confident and healthy girl in today’s climate. Wardy provides specific advice and sample conversations for getting family, friends, educators, and health care providers on your side; getting kids to think critically about sexed-up toys and clothes; talking to girls about body image; and much more. She provides tips for creating a home full of diverse, inspiring toys and media free of gender stereotypes; using your voice and consumer power to fight the companies making major missteps; and taking the reins to limit, challenge, and change harmful media and products. Melissa Wardy is the founder of Pigtail Pals & Ballcap Buddies, a website selling empowering and inspirational children’s apparel and products, and Redefine Girly, a blog surrounding the issue of the sexualization of girls. Wardy and her work have been featured

“Melissa Wardy’s book reads like a conversation with a smart, wise, funny friend; one who dispenses fabulous advice on raising a strong, healthy, full-of-awesome girl.” —Peggy Orenstein, author of Cinderella Ate My Daughter All-pink aisles in toy stores, popular dolls that resemble pole dancers, ultrasexy Halloween costumes in tween sizes. Many parents are increasingly startled and unnerved at how today’s media, marketers, and manufacturers are sexualizing and stereotyping ever-younger girls, but feel powerless to do much about it. Mother of two Melissa Wardy channeled her feelings of isolation and frustration into activism—creating a website to sell T-shirts with girl-positive messages; blogging and swapping parenting strategies with families around the world; writing letters to corporate offenders; organizing petitions; and raising awareness through parent workshops and social media. Wardy has spearheaded campaigns against national brands and retailers that resulted in the removal of sexist, offensive ads and products. Now, in Redefining Girly, she shares her parenting and activism strategies with other families concerned about raising a confident and healthy girl in today’s climate. Wardy provides specific advice and sample conversations for getting family, friends, educators, and health care providers on your side; getting kids to think critically about sexed-up toys and clothes; talking to girls about body image; and much more. She provides tips for creating a home full of diverse, inspiring toys and media free of gender stereotypes; using your voice and consumer power to fight the companies making major missteps; and taking the reins to limit, challenge, and change harmful media and products. Melissa Wardy is the founder of Pigtail Pals & Ballcap Buddies, a website selling empowering and inspirational children’s apparel and products, and Redefine Girly, a blog surrounding the issue of the sexualization of girls. Wardy and her work have been featured

A journalist and activist who was profiled in a 2011 Marie Claire feature outlines bold perspectives on the realities of being young, multi-racial, economically challenged and transgender in today's America, recounting her disadvantaged youth and decision to undergo gender reassignment surgery at the age of 18 before pursuing a career and falling in love.

Since the 1990s, when Reviving Ophelia became a best seller and “Girl Power” a familiar anthem, girls have assumed new visibility in the culture. Yet in asserting their new power, young women have redefined femininity in ways that have often mystified their mothers. They have also largely disavowed feminism, even though their new influence is a likely legacy of feminism’s Second Wave. At the same time, popular culture has persisted in idealizing, demonizing, or simply erasing mothers, rarely depicting them in strong and loving relationships with their daughters. Unruly Girls, Unrepentent Mothers, a companion to Kathleen Rowe Karlyn’s groundbreaking work, The Unruly Woman, studies the ways popular culture and current debates within and about feminism inform each other. Surveying a range of films and television shows that have defined girls in the postfeminist era—from Titanic and My So-Called Life to Scream and The Devil Wears Prada, and from Love and Basketball to Ugly Betty—Karlyn explores the ways class, race, and generational conflicts have shaped both Girl Culture and feminism’s Third Wave. Tying feminism’s internal conflicts to negative attitudes toward mothers in the social world, she asks whether today’s seemingly materialistic and apolitical girls, inspired by such real and fictional figures as the Spice Girls and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, have turned their backs on the feminism of their mothers or are redefining unruliness for a new age.

This is not a book about youth ministry. Well, it's not entirely about youth ministry. This is a book about the church and her relationship with teenagers. And it's a book about leadership. These pages offer an invitation for anyone who loves teenagers. This is a story, a calling, a vision for the church to be more whole, more cohesive, and longer lasting than the six or seven years that make up most youth ministries. In part, this book is a case study about one church who became captivated by a bigger vision for their teenagers and decided things needed to be different. Quite different. And it's a stake in the ground that things must be different in our churches and cities for the sake of this generation and the ones to come. Birthed in the cauldron of frustration and possibility, youth worker and author April Diaz took a big risk when a staff position opened in youth ministry at her church. She led her church by asking some tough questions: What if we changed this position from a Youth Pastor to Student Integration Pastor? And what if this was more than a job title, but a change in the way our church views its relationship with teenagers? What if we don't just hire a youth ministry Pied Piper to isolate our teenagers, but hire a youth ministry champion who won't let the congregation forget about her responsibility for the spiritual formation of the teenagers in our midst? Equal parts intervention, idealism, memoir and guide, this tiny book packs a punch you'll be thinking about and wrestling with well beyond the final page.

Showcasing the diverse voices of girls across North America, Tatiana Fraser and Caia Hagel draw on the wisdom of young women making positive change in their own lives and communities, to offer tools for families, friends and educators to assist the empowerment of young women. With its engaging and cutting-edge view of the cultural, social, and political issues faced by girls, Girl Positive examines the transforming identities of girls in the world today. Examining topics from social media, sexual violence, hypersexuality and cyberspace identities to girls as world leaders of positive change, Girl Positive offers stories of struggle, victory, and inspiration. Travelling across Canada and the United States from Montreal to New Haven (CT), New Jersey to Toronto, Whitehorse to the Wemindji Cree Nation in northern Quebec, Fraser and Hagel spent time talking and hanging out with school-age girls, college students and young women early in their careers. Interspersed in these narratives is advice and input from adult experts in media, health, race, and gender politics, sexuality, education and leadership. Each chapter also includes a Survival Kit, which offers tips and discussion questions for girls and the adults in their lives. Through Fraser and Hagel's interviews readers will learn how to equip themselves to encourage girls (and boys)--as parents, friends, educators, mentors and activists. Girl Positive illuminates emerging culture and fresh politics, and shows us the future in the making.

Girls’ Feminist Blogging in a Postfeminist Age explores the practices of U.S.-based teenage girls who actively maintain feminist blogs and participate in the feminist blogosphere as readers, writers, and commenters on platforms including Blogspot, Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr. Drawing on interviews with bloggers between the ages of fifteen and twenty-one, as well as discursive textual analyses of feminist blogs and social networking postings authored by teenage girls, Keller addresses how these girls use blogging as a practice to articulate contemporary feminisms and craft their own identities as feminists and activists. In this sense, feminist girl bloggers defy hegemonic postfeminist and neoliberal girlhood subjectivities, a finding that Keller uses to complicate both academic and popular assertions that suggest teenage girls are uninterested in feminism. Instead, Keller maintains that these young bloggers employ digital media production to educate their peers about feminism, connect with like-minded activists, write feminist history, and make feminism visible within popular culture, practices that build upon and continue a lengthy tradition of American feminism into the twenty-first century. Girls’ Feminist Bloggers in a Postfeminist Age challenges readers to not only reconsider teenage girls’ online practices as politically and culturally significant, but to better understand their crucial role in a thriving contemporary feminism.

"Filled with practical advice, inspired reading lists, and thoughtful analysis of the challenges girls face, this book is an indispensable guide for anyone who cares about raising girls to be leaders." —June Cohen, executive producer, TED "Mother-daughter book clubs can help you navigate the daunting challenges of raising confident and mighty girls. This comprehensive guide, rich with discussion ideas and book, film, and media recommendations, will inspire more mothers to start their own book clubs." —Lesli Rotenberg, general manager, Children's Media, PBS Mother-daughter book clubs can do more than encourage reading, bonding, and socializing, suggests educational psychologist and parenting coach Lori Day. They can create a safe haven where girls can discuss and navigate the challenges of girlhood today. In Her Next Chapter, Day draws from experiences in her own club and her expertise as an educator to offer a timely and empowering take on mother-daughter book clubs. She provides overviews of eight of the biggest challenges facing girls today while weaving in carefully chosen book, movie, and media recommendations; thoughtful discussion questions and prompts; and suggested fun group activities. Lori Day, M.Ed., is an educational psychologist, consultant, and parenting coach with Lori Day Consulting. She has worked in the field of education for over 25 years and is a contributing blogger at the Huffington Post and several other websites, writing about parenting, education, gender, popular culture, and media. She lives in Newburyport, Massachusetts. Charlotte Kugler, Day's daughter, is a student at Mount Holyoke College. She lives in South Hadley, Massachusetts.