It’s So Cliche [a guest post]

Today’s guest post [very first one ya’ll!!!!] is from Janna Hall of My Beautiful Catharsis and serves as reminder to all girls and women: stop being someone you’re not despite what the media is handing you daily and start being you! Because there’s no one else in this world that is better at being well…You! I couldn’t agree more! Around here at SGS we are constantly dissecting and beating those too present stereotypes to a pulp! Thanks to Janna for sharing her thoughts, inspiration and honesty! 

It’s So Cliché…but “Be yourself; everyone else is taken” is a mantra that we need to carry on throughout our life. As kids, we grow up wanting to be like the girls on TV. My best friend and I couldn’t sit through a show or a movie without shouting, “I’M HER!” every time the prettiest girl came on the screen. For us, it was Clueless.  From the moment Stacey Dash hops into Cher’s Jeep, we thought of every reason to ditch who we were and immediately wanted to look like, sound like, and be Dionne. Or the pink Power Ranger. Or Beyonce. Or in my best friend’s case, Britney. From a young age, we’re almost programmed to want to be everyone else, whether it’s a Disney princess, a pop icon, or the popular girl in school. It’s so wonderful to pretend, but what happens when we’re adults and realize that we’re actually not those women, nor will we ever be them? In the midst of our fantasies, we’ve grown to hate ourselves, not because of who we are, but because of who we aren’t. We aren’t those princesses. We aren’t those girls who, with one quick, flirty glance fall in love and live happily ever after with our Prince Charming. We aren’t those celebrities who have picture perfect bodies. We aren’t them. We are who we are. I am Janna. You are you. Somewhere down the path of pretending, we’ve placed more focus on the body we don’t have than our own reality. Somewhere down that path, we’ve snapped from fantasy land and traveled down the path of self-loathing. We’re obsessed with someone else’s beauty so much so that everything we see when we look in the mirror is repulsive. We’re so obsessed with someone else’s life that our own reality, no matter how fabulous it may be, seems worthless. We wander through life wanting to be someone else, while letting the person we were created to be wither away.

It saddens me to see people hate who they are. What’s the point? You will never be anyone but who you are, and to want anything but that is setting yourself up for disappointment. Society, nor a man, nor a celebrity, can or should make you feel like the person you are isn’t effing amazing. Because you are. And there’s no one quite like you.“Today you are You, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is Youer than you.”

Janna Hall

Janna Hall

Graduating in 2010 from James Madison University with a degree in English, Janna left her hometown of Richmond, Virginia and headed to New York City in search of something greater than herself. That “something,” she discovered, was the position of Editor for EvolutionaryPress Publishing, helping young writers fulfill their dreams of becoming a published author. A now 7-time published editor, Janna enjoys the thrill of making dreams come true, and continually seeks ways to reach others and make a lasting impact on lives—both young and old. After spending a summer volunteering with New York Cares helping young girls prepare for the upcoming school year, Janna realized how passionate she was about seeing young girls gain confidence in their ability to succeed in the classroom and decided to use her passion to help girls succeed in all aspects of their lives. Now, she works for Girl Scouts of the USA, running the social media channels and pushing the message of building girls of courage, confidence, and character.

It’s Chime for Change!

hp-chimeforchange

Source chimeforchange.org

Education.
Health.
Justice.
For every girl.
For every woman.
Everywhere.

If you know me, you know that I love me some televised musical entertainment in the form of awards shows, music videos, reality TV and benefit concerts from time to time.

And on Sunday night live from the Twickenham Stadium in London the sold out benefit concert Chime for Change aired on NBC featuring the musical stylings of J.Lo, Ellie Goulding, Beyonce, Florence and the Machine, Mary J. Blige, John Legend and many more. Wish I was there! There were also celeb spokespeople: Selma Hayek, Frida Giannini, Blake Lively, Ryan Reynolds, Madonna, Jada Pinkett Smith and others who spoke about specific causes close to their hearts. The concert was televised in 150 countries in 6 continents. Talk about a movement! Heyyo!

Why were they coming together? To raise their (high profile) voices to make a change for every girl and woman all over the world. It’s Chime for Change (I love a good play on words!)

Chime for Change founded by Gucci (yup, you read that right…more on that later), co-founded by Beyonce Knowles, Selma Hayak and Frida Giannini (Gucci designer), is a new global campaign to raise funds and awareness for girls’ and women’s empowerment. The campaign focuses on three key areas: Education, Health and Justice.

Through the crowd-funding organization Catapult, nonprofit organizations post their campaigns, people can then search, find and fund the project that means the most to them. Simple, easy, to the point—I like it.

What I don’t like is the fact is Gucci is the founder of this campaign. They’re using their international brand recognition for the benefit of making change. I get that and I think it’s great. BUT they should probably practice what they preach, amiright? A great first step in this Chime for Change is to change how they objectify women in their print advertisements, to which they have received controversy over in the past. (Exhibit A & Exhibit B) I have to be honest when I say I was super pumped about this televised concert aimed to empower females around the world, but discovering that it was a project of Gucci I pulled back, I was disappointed, which is an understatement. Until…

Jada Pinkett Smith presented the project “Jessica’s Story.” Three years ago Jessica escaped sexual abuse and trafficking, a nightmare that she had lived since she was six years old. She is just one of the hundreds of thousands of children who are sex trafficked in the United States. For Jessica there were not a lot of resourced to turn to as she sought to escape, that’s why today, Jessica is helping other girls break the stigma, empower them and provide them with resources.
Click to watch her story below!

Barbie Biology

::Singing:: “I’m a Barbie girl in a Barbie worrrld, life in plastic, it’s fantastic!”
Except not.

As a little girl I owned many Barbie branded items, (who didn’t?) the multi-level “dream” house complete with pulley elevator, the battery-powered pink Jeep that I drove around the cul de sac collecting autumn leaves and rocks, naturally. I also owned shififtyfive multi-talented, career-driven Barbie dolls, who had drawers full of clothing for any and all occasions. I mean what if she wanted to roller skate in the park with her puppy and sister Skipper? A girl needs options!

However, being a kid I’m not sure I even realized how un-proportional the Barbie doll actually was compared to the human species because I was too busy using my imagination (yay, creativity!) and finding the matching minuscule plastic high heel in the air vent. Pesky things never stayed put.
Shoeless Barbies forever.

After I grew up and playtime was over I began to realize the trademark Barbie bod was no where near that of normal girls’ errr… humans’. Reality check: Barbie’s are the in-hand version of the digitally altered images we see on the glossy pages of magazines.
Refinery 29 put out an article with the most glorious graphics from Rehabs.com demonstrating the ridiculousness of the Barbie body, asking “Is the Barbie body possible?” The short answer: No. But read on for just how ridiculous.

Let’s start from the top down, yes? Yes.

Because Vegas…

IMG_3486

Sporting the new shades!

This morning I went to clean off my sunglasses from this past weekend in Vegas, where I met 68 new friends, and decided to just leave the chlorine droplets, greasy finger prints and cigarette tinge because it reminds me of all the adventures and fun I had being in Sin City for the first time with some of the coolest and most genuine people I have met! And breathe.

So this post is going to have a bit of a personal spin, but its fun to open up every now and again right? Right. This is my first trip and last trip with Bloggers in Sin City as this will be the fifth and final time it will ever happen. I admit it makes my heart hurt a bit, but also I’m so happy I took the plunge and just went for it! ALL of it.
Luckily, prior to the trip I was fortunate to meet up with Nicole, the ultra rad creator of this fantastical weekend and other bloggers who came in town for the Rock ‘n Roll Half Marathon in March and another time I met up with the DMV bloggers to do what we do best, a boozy brunch. Meeting up with a few of my Internet friends in person gave me peace of mind and my mother the opportunity to realize that I wasn’t crazy and that yes these people I’ve “known” online are actually IRL (in real life) individuals.

ALL the reflecting:

Mixing at Serendipity3

Mixing at Serendipity3

Upon arrival I was hella nervous because many of the people had been there for almost an entire 24 hours together and had all the 8-second hugs (hugs bond people, fact.) I had missed out. I awkwardly showed up with all my things to the registration room and what I was not prepared for was many of these larger-than-life personalities online would in real life be introverted and you know what, they were freaking normal. Well at least for a few more hours because in those hours of eating Serendipity3 savory treats, staring contests, more 8-second hugs, pineapple mango mojitos and uncontrollable laughter we became friends.
Friends that in the next few days would dance at Margaritaville, sing Disney in the middle of the casino, play in waterfalls at the pool, nap, sightsee, frolick and be VIPs who sport white clothing down the strip leading to comments like:
a. “That’s the biggest wedding party I’ve ever seen.”
b. “Are they all getting married?” #sisterwives
c. “What is happening right now?”

Wicked White Party Classiness.

Wicked White Party Classiness.

Until this weekend I would have labeled myself a shy person in new situations with practically strangers, but I found that when put in said position I somehow naturally become an extrovert, maybe my way of coping with a new situation is just putting myself out there, squashing the nervousness and embracing the present moment. This is a forever fabulous observation and I often throughout the trip found myself sitting, hanging, eating, drinking, lounging and just gallivanting all over the place with every and all BiSC-uits because I wanted to be friends with EVERYONE. Because VEGAS.

My Days in Vegas Told in List Form

(because they’re just easier to digest and read, always.) oh! and more photos

Silence is Louder than Violence & the Difference Between Being a Bystander and a Do-stander

Men and Boys this one’s for you! I just finished watching the TedTalk by Jackson Katz surrounding gender violence issues. What are gender violence issues exactly?: Sexual assault, domestic violence, relationship abuse, sexual harassment, violence toward children. A.K.A as topics that are icky to talk about for me mainly because they’re so dang controversial. Double Ick. Now hold on a minute don’t X out quite yet, especially you dudes out there! This post isn’t going to be about the ins and outs of the gender violence issues but rather how men often get left out of the conversations surrounding these issues.

When I first watched this TedTalk I was completely overwhelmed with everything Katz had to say because there was just SO MUCH INFORMATION. SO MUCH. In order to help the info digest better in my hungry brain cells I wrote down quotes, aha! moments, and “I can agree with that” points. They are written below in paragraph form as concisely as I could make sense of them. You could also watch the TedTalk! In fact you probably should because I can hear your brain’s cells grumbling from here. Feed them! 

Ish-is-aboutta-get-REEL HIGHLIGHTS
Brain Relations: Gender violence issues have been seen as women’s issues because something in the human brain trigger “gender” to mean “women” the same way “sexual orientation” triggers us to think “gay”. Pesky brain. Somehow our brains take these labels steers them down a path to the least-dominant group (in our case, women). In these examples, the dominant group (for the sake of this post, men) is often left out of the conversations.  Katz doesn’t see these gender issues as solely “women’s issues that some good men help out with but rather these are men’s issues first and foremost.”

Commonalities: What people forget is boys are affected by the men in their lives, who boys sees as their role model, harming his mother, sister, or another female in the home. He’s traumatized. Yet we as a society turn our heads to the young boy because we focus on the women who were abused in the situation not on the psychological health of the boy who was the witness to the abuse.  What’s going on with these boys, why are we forgetting about them?

So to those people that are bashing the female leaders for taking a stand on gender issues and labeling the movement as anti-male you’re a little loco senor(ita). In gender violence instances both men and women are victims. That’s our commonality. This isn’t just a you issue it’s a we issue.
“The same system that produces men who abuse women, produces men who abuse other men,” said Katz.  (see the daily evening news for evidence) A vicious cycle.

Societal Roles: As we all know several things play into how we as humans, as a culture, behave, and interact but for men a lot of these roles are defined by race, religion, media, family life, economics, sports, and peer-to-peer interaction also known as pressure.  These “roles” define how men should behave in our society and being all gunho about something that has been labeled (again by society errr our brains) as women’s issues is to just not say anything, do not pass go do not collection $200. But you see guys this is the key problemo and a question I want to present is…How can men change manhood as its defined by society?

Simple Answer? Hold on to your britches people

A&F-ing It Up!

Sure Abercrombie and Fitch has faced scrutiny for its racy advertisements and parent backlash of the NSFS (not safe for school) tees. However, I still shopped there when I was a teen—around age 14. All of “those” surfer chic with a touch of prep-in-its-step brands were all the rage in high school. Its true! If you wore those brands or any “in brand” (see: PacSun) then you were stylish and on trend… and I guess “cool.”

article-0-1835F871000005DC-81_634x424

I grew out of these brands, literally, when I was a freshman in college. I knew it was time to abandon the brands when all I could find was the occasional sweater in a size large which, if I remember correctly equated to about a size small in most department stores. These popular brands no longer carried the sizes for my curves—curves, which by the way I was happy to have! ::twerks::

Then there was the hellish shopping experience. Between all the tweens geeking out at all the crude tees, the overly polluted stench in the air (aint no body needs to wear that much cologne), the heat, and the necessity to BYOHeadLamp to see what-the-what they were even selling. I was over shopping there and apparently so was A&F’s Jackassery of a CEO, Mike Jeffries, who is making headlines this week due to a Business Insider story  about how they don’t want XL females shopping at their stores because they aren’t “cool” or “beautiful.”

Enter stage right: My get fired up pissed off WRITE-IN-ALL-CAPS-ABOUT-HOW-ABSURD-THIS- (gary busey doppelganger) MAN-IS Thoughts. GAH, LOUD NOISES. But first a statement from the CEO who has the gonads to actually run a company based on these bullying principles.

“In every school there are the cool and popular kids, and then there are the not-so-cool kids,” he told the site. “Candidly, we go after the cool kids. We go after the attractive all-American kid with a great attitude and a lot of friends. A lot of people don’t belong [in our clothes], and they can’t belong. Are we exclusionary? Absolutely. Those companies that are in trouble are trying to target everybody: young, old, fat, skinny. But then you become totally vanilla. You don’t alienate anybody, but you don’t excite anybody, either,” Jeffries told Salon in an interview in 2006.

Want to know why Jeffries’ crazypants are on a bit too tight for today’s standards?, thought you might, click to continue reading

How P!nkly Put: “Reformed Slut”iness and The Talk

Driving to work today I heard on the radio, clearly my only sense of mobile news while my iPhone containing my Twitter feed is safely tucked away to resist temptation…. Any way, P!nk told Glamour Magazine that she is a “reformed slut.” It’s her “unsophisticated way of taking my power back.” P!nk has always, in my eyes been a woman of strength with a no-bullshit attitude who takes risks. All-in-all, I’m a fan.

Photo by Ellen Von Unwerth.

Photo by Ellen Von Unwerth.

First, let me say I understand what she was “Try”ing to do. She is aiming to give the “slut” stigma a good ‘ol drop kick and subside the double standard that exists when men and women do a casual sheet dance. Why is it that men are labeled as “the man,” “player” or even “stud” all of which have a positive definition while women are labeled as “slut,” “whore,” and any fill in the blank derogatory label here? Using the phrase she did is clearly garnering a lot of attention by being so P!nkly put.

What really got me fuming was while I was on lunch today we have the ladies of The Talk (CBS) coming through the wall-mounted TV. They were babbling on about their Emmy nominations, which proceeded to have the cue card holders’ arms fall off because of the straight 5 minutes of applause that was required in the opening segment. The ladies then with a lack of finesse moved into a discussion about P!nk’s statement.

Host Aisha Tyler mentioned that she actually uses the word to squash the societal stigma and “take it away” from men using it. Host Julie Chen agreed and tries to flip the script by using it to describe men’s sexual promiscuity as “slutty.” I’m sorry, but using the word in any size, shape, connotation, or WHATever makes it seem OK for others to continue using it. The way Julie and Aisha are using the word seems comfortable, comfortable enough to use it. Sorry ladies, not the right approach. Just.don’t.use.it. Period.

Continue reading →

Drowning in Brands, Quick Toss The Kids LifeSavers!

In today’s society we are infiltrated with brands through advertisements that play Houdini mind tricks on us, which at some point (probably right away) form our opinions of what clothing we wear, food we eat, toys we buy, etc. But if you’re a kid/teenager, you are drowning in it and don’t have a chance to come up for air! Someone toss the kids Life Savers (see what I did there?)

drowninginbrandsOn average an American teenager spends 31 hours a week watching TV, 17 hours listening to music, and 10 hours online. (LoveSocial with MissRepresentation.org) And well marketers are no dummies, they hit those groups full-force straight in the ‘noggin.

In college I watched a documentary called Consuming Kids. You should watch it, highly fascinating and scary all at the same time! AH. 
My knowledge of this documentary resurfaced when Anna Lappe a concerned mother and food mythbuster honed in on the food industry in particular and the obsession that kids develop.

“The food industry says themselves that they spend $2 billion every year in marketing directly to children and teenagers,” said Lappe in her TEDxTalk. “When you think about it in the context that diet related illnesses among young people are on the rise, and we think about this omnipresent marketing I think it isn’t an exaggeration that is has become down right dangerous.”

Yep, Lappe knows what’s up. When I (hopefully) become a parent I can only shield my children so much because, like the Lappe and Consuming Kids noted, commercialization is burying children under a pile of consumer messages. It’s inevitable they will receive that commercial stimulus in schools, day care, or at slumber parties, EV.ERY.WHERE. It’s not ideal to guard children from social situations because that doesn’t help children develop either. It’s clear that parenting in the 21st Century is more difficult than ever!

Continue reading →

Fact: You Are Beautiful

Dove does it again. With only 4% of women around the world thinking they are beautiful I believe this video did its job to promote positive body image and prevent self-hate.
This video tugs at the heart strings and shows that we are our toughest critiques.

Dove took a trained FBI forensic artist to sketch portraits of the women, who were hidden behind a curtain, based on their own descriptions of their facial features. The second part of the experiment was to have others describe those same women and compare the portraits side-by-side. The differences were alarming. Often the portrait where the woman described herself was darker in shading, had poor or closed off posture, and was older than the actual woman in real life. The portraits where others described the woman were lighter and vibrant, younger, and in my opinion more accurate of the actual woman.
Now I want Dove to do this campaign with younger girls around five or six years-old, super models and shoot why not go for it all and do this experiment with men?
Today I want each of you reading this (yes, you too guys) to stop the self-hate and start to realize that you are beautiful. Let’s beat the statistic. Positive thinking is powerful and how you view yourself affects how others, in all aspects of your life, view you. So make the promise to yourself because you deserve it, because you are beautiful, because you are you!
Repeat after me: I am beautiful!
I can’t hear you!: I AM BEAUTIFUL.
Oh yes, yes you are! Git it girl!

The Bigger the ‘Thigh Gap’ the Bigger Your Popularity Status

Often the Thigh Gap is camouflaged to being motivation for exercise and fitness. Image from the Thigh Gap Tumblr

Often the Thigh Gap is camouflaged to being motivation for exercise and fitness. Image from the Thigh Gap Tumblr

OK so the first I heard of this new body image obsession was on The Kane Show, the morning radio show I listen to make my hour or longer commute bearable. You should listen. The DJs are an entertaining bunch.

So what the hell is a “Thigh Gap?”

According to the NJ high school juniors interviewed by GMA reporter JuJu Chang it’s when you’re standing with your feet and knees together and there is a space between your thighs that is viewed as the “ideal body shape.” Yup don’t have one, not sure I ever did.

Why is this a new and dangerous obsession? Well besides that fact that it’s predominately runway or severely photoshopped models that sport this new “trend,” it’s damn near impossible to achieve this “gap.” Teen psychologist Barbara Greenburg called it an “unattainable goal.”  Agreed. Personally the closest I ever got to a “gap” was between my teeth during my adolescences for which slllooowwwly corrected, we’re talking 5 years people, by braces due to my over bite and a whole mess of other dental problems. Thanks genetics.

No really, genetics plays a huge role in how we’re built. I like to call it the 50/50. Half is genetics and half is the lifestyle we lead, which means what we eat, how often we exercise and being overall happy campers. Also side note these genetics mean some of these images on Tumblr and walking up and down a runway have bow’d legs which can look just like a Thigh Gap.

Continue reading →