Beauty myth or truth?

Young girls have not acquired the cognitive or language ability to formulate verbal or interpersonal identifications to oppose advertising's cultural myth that women must be young, thin, and beautiful. Girls become addicted to external approval. They get tangled in the confusion year after year through middle school and into high school without the information they need to begin the journey to authentic relationships with themselves and their peers. It affects their leadership skills, multicultural assessments, and academic pursuits.

Symptoms begin as the girls basing friendships on looks and status consumption styles rather than human qualities of personal character, values, and honorable principles. The APA’s Task Force on Advertising and Children states that young children inherently lack the cognitive capability to effectively recognize and defend against televised commercials. . .and the persuasive intent of such messages is by its very nature exploitative.

GCA presents a social network of leadership development through the performing arts for girls to access the language dialogue with one another and themselves to discuss these underlying issues. Girls daily conversation do not yet address consumerism and advertising affects on personal identity. Parents don’t know how to counter it as marketers blatantly bypass the adults’ input and target a child’s influence and access to consumer purchases.

Our program targets status vs. social conscious consumption patterns, fashion magazine content analysis of and by individuals, and use of media stereotype images on self perception and identity allowing America's daughters to think, discuss, and digest new ways of responding to their consumer saturated worlds.

Media Glam

According to the A.C. Nielsen Co., today's youth in America spend 900 hours per year in a classroom but 1500 hours per year watching television.

Girls channel surf with remote controls, socialize with Facebook, and text message with their cell phones. It is a glamorous life. Friendships abound, popularity soars, and teen advice is just a click a way.

Yes, they can multi task with the best of them, but are their communications expressing their full potential? What do they constantly talk about? Fashion, friends, boys, each other?

Through the performing arts, GCA has carefully designed our program to give girls new insights into their behavior of product consumption, peer interaction, and self-communication. Once the psychology of the media influence is revealed, America’ daughters will have new information to rewrite the consumer oriented scripts that presently define their female experience.

Media Literacy

Dr. Susan Linn of Harvard Medical School states," Marketing executives are insinuating their brands into the fabric of [teenagers'] lives. They want--to use industry terms--'cradle to grave' brand loyalty and to 'own' children."

There are several media literacy programs online for girls. The APA 's Task Force of the Sexualization of Girls lists:
About-Face, ACT--Alliance for Children and Television, Advocates for Youth, Beacon Street Girls, Center for Media Literacy, Dads and Daughters, Girl Scouts of America, Girls Inc
Girls Inc. Media Literacy, Girls, Women, and Media Project, Hardy Girls Healthy Women, Mainely Girls, Media Awareness Network, Media Literacy Clearinghouse, medialiteracy.com
Mediawise, New Moon Magazine, See Jane/Improving Gender Portrayalsin Children’s Media,
Teen Voices/Women’s Express, Third Wave Foundation, uniquely Me!, The Girl Scouts/Dove Self-Esteem Program, Words Can Work

Most of these programs can be found online with ample links for our girls to educate themselves, but do our daughters even know they need the information? Does "girl talk" include any reference to the problem, or have we "bought into the cultural myth brought to us through the wonders of advertising, that women must be young, ingenuous, gorgeous, and innocuous?" Selling Addiction to Women

Beginning in middle school, girls become quiet aware that brands are used to determine peer status and group participation. On the first day of 7th grade, my daughter's friend did not open a book after school diving in to explore the upcoming year's exciting studies. Instead she wanted to go to the mall to get a new outfit for the next day of school.

Are we even having feelings of brand domination or are we so addicted to external values that we cannot hear the whispers in our minds?

Consumption Games

America's daughters just need a little help from brand domination. They have been born into a world of fashionistas and mall mania. We are just realizing the damage to their beings. At birth, they begin their journey into fairytales and princesses as Disney rules with Cinderella, Belle, and Jasmine-all beautifully and perfectly polished. Our girls grow up just trying to fit in with the fashion obsessed culture.

What my generation called "keeping up with the Joneses" is now the "consumption games of the glamour crowd". Whether you are at school or the mall, you notice who has the most points.

We need to give our girls information to use their intellects to define their needs and wants instead of corporate America.

Glam Council of America, the US Teen Fashion Board is designed for girls to express how fashion, media, and technology influence personal development. This is a performing arts program based on the motto, "It's not what your wear, it's who you are!" Until America's daughters get new sources of info to combat the branding mastery of "cradle to grave" marketing, we can expect behavioral misconceptions to continue.

Visit our website, www.GlamCouncilofAmerica.org to learn how you can help.

What's Glam, Girls?

America's daughters are born into a world of barbie dolls, movie stars, and fairytale princesses- beautifully polished models of perfection. Is it any doubt that they become just a little confused about what they are "suppose" to look like versus their daily reality?

How do they find their pop and style when corporate marketers and the media expose them to wall street's interpretation of themselves before they get a chance to express it on their own?

Parents watch their little girls enter the tween scene armed with mall mania and teen fashionista expectations. And with no referees or rules for the haves and the have nots, America's status symbols become brand acquisitions dominated by advertising agencies savvy psychological experts. See APA's article: Driving teen egos--and buying--through 'branding'

What can we do to balance the playing board for our girls? What tools and information can we give them to understand how media, technology, and fashion are influencing their personal identities? How do we protect them during those formative years so that they can express their God given individuality and find themselves before all is lost to brand domination?