Co-Creators of ProjectGirl.org - Jane Bartell (video producer) and Kelly Parks Snider (visual artist)

The origin of an idea or vision is often difficult to define. Years ago, I was rummaging through an old box in a junk store. It got me thinking about today’s culture, my four children, and their childhood and kid culture. It seems that the absurd had become the living reality for many of our kids. Our culture seems to normalize and often glamorizes disrespect. From the moment our kids begin speaking, they are exposed to cartoon characters with big bad attitude, negative tones and so many word wars.

Jane Bartell (co-creator of ProjectGirl.org) and I started thinking about kid culture, the overall lack of respect for one another, the over-sexualized images that surround us. Images that glamorize violence, a culture obsessed with thinness, advertising that perpetuated stereotypes, excessive consumption, and body objectification. The stories, attitudes and the relationships depicted in contemporary media show nothing but girl fighting and competition. These observations made us realize that the world that our kids were growing up in is far more polluted than the world we grew up in.

So we began ProjectGirl.org.

We asked the question “why?” Asking why usually demands social action.

• Why are girls dissatisfied with their bodies?
• Why do we stereotype?
• Why are girls having trouble getting along with each other and their parents?
• Why are young girls so sexy so soon?
• Why are we as a society passively allowing this to go on?

At the start of ProjectGirl.org we started researching, obsessing, networking, going to the experts around the country and asking questions, gathering information. And here’s what we found. There seemed to be a big fat arrow pointing to the media. There also seemed to have been some significant changes that had taken place over the last few years. Take a look.

When our kids were born in the mid 90’s, advertisers were spending $6.2 billion marketing to children. By the time our kids were ready to go to Kindergarten just five years later, that amount had nearly doubled to $12 billion. Now it’s over $18 billion.
We felt vindicated, and angry. We also found out that in the ‘80s, right before our kids were born, kids were being exposed to 1500 commercial media messages a day. Today, that number has grown to 3,000.

The media is everywhere. We can’t escape it. We must be awakened, the media is everywhere and we must learn to read it, deconstruct it so it doesn’t run and ruin the lives of our girls.

So we took action. We developed the ProjectGirl.org curriculum to help educators and group leaders learn how to talk to girls about the media…to say things they’ve never been told in ways they can understand.
Stay tuned for our updates from our travels and experiences presenting the ProjectGirl.org story and curriculum throughout the USA.