Growing Girls With Purpose

An International Violence Against Women Act has been introduced in Congress.

Any country that allows acts of violence and terrorism against its own girls and women is a country that would also commit an act of violence and terrorism against The United States and any other country it deems unacceptable.

Countries that educate girls, economically empower their women and acknowledge a woman’s physical and spiritual autonomy are economically prosperous and more likely to be Internationally peaceful and cooperative.

They are also less likely to be breeding grounds for religious and political extremists, including terrorists. It’s a fact.

Because this is so, the International Violence Against Women Act is not a “women’s issue” it is an International Security Issue.

Whatever we spend to educate girls and women, economically assist women in business development, strongly encourage legal autonomy for women even sanctioning countries that allow acts of violence against females will come back to us a hundred-fold in Peace, International trade, and third-world development and financial independence. Violence against women in much of the world includes: mass rape, throwing acid in girls faces, starving, medically neglecting, sex trafficking, manslaughter by AIDS and other STDs, infanticide, honor killings and forced and coerced abortion.

This must stop now. No more excuses.

Read Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide
if you require further evidence that the International Violence Against Women Act is not only a moral imperative, but also the single most effective strategy to beat terrorism around the world.

Read Nicholas Kristof’s New York Times Columns for more information about just how dangerous the world is if you’re born a girl. The fact that violence against females translates to terrorism around the world is a central narrative in his work.

Photo from Vital Voices Blog.

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Today my Mom yelled at me.

So I cried until the room was a lake.

~Ainsley

(The cartoon mother (me) is screaming Get Off The Table!) I’m certainly not proud of the yelling and I did apologize.

Still, as a writer, I can’t help but show you my parenting flaw, so you can see the artfully-crafted verse my daughter has written.

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My name is Kevin and I’m 17 years old. I discovered your website and thought you might have some good insight on an experience I had involving a girl’s image of her body. She was a girl I had just met at a dance a few weeks ago. We talked for a good half hour and seemed to be hitting it off. Then, things suddenly went downhill. I commented that she had a “really nice, hourglass figure”. I thought she would take it as a compliment but instead she became deeply offended. I went into damage control mode and tried to clarify my comments but I think I only made things worse when I used the term “healthy”. With a look of complete disgust, WHAP!, she slapped my face and departed. She had a classic hourglass figure – large bust, narrow waist, shapely hips/legs. I guess she had interpreted “hourglass” as meaning big/overweight/full figured. Why can’t girls embrace their curves?

My response:

I don’t know Kevin. It’s mystery to me as well, why girls can’t just love what they’ve got? I, personally, have always striven for an hour-glass figure. But, I’m not in your generation.

Evolutionarily, scientists use the hip to waist ratio as a measurement of beauty and attractiveness. Hour-glass is the evolutionary ideal.

Perhaps, though you misread why she was offended. It’s possible – and I wasn’t there, so I can only guess – that she wanted your focus and interest to be on her self, the whole package - brains, personality, mutual interests, shared values, and body – rather than on the shape of her bod or her physical appearance. Especially, so soon in your interaction.

Next time, save the hot body comments for a more intimate moment, when you know each other better and she’s sure you’re not just in it for her shapeliness.  Focus on a new girl as a three-dimensional and interesting person, a friend you share things in common with. What did you discover about this girl in the 30 minutes you chatted? Did you both enjoy history or love to watch Sci-Fi films or enjoy the same literature? Were you both going to the same college, or have a similar family background or religious affiliation? Do you both love to swim, golf or fish?

Focus on those things next time.  Ask a girl out on a date, doing something of mutual interest, and you most likely won’t get slapped in the face.

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President Barack Obama announced that Michelle Obama, First Lady and mother of two First Daughters Sasha and Malia, will be taking on Childhood Obesity as her pet cause. In this MSNBC story Michelle Obama admits to a very similar story as the one I’ve told here on The Girl Revolution – the doctor says, “Hey your kids are in a risky place BMI-wise.”

I could not have been more thrilled. You know, Tribe, that I am very concerned with the negative consequences resulting from apathetically allowing obesity to consume our daughters: early puberty, higher insurance premiums, preexisting conditions like diabetes, higher risks of breast cancer, infertility, and those are just the gender-specific risks.

I recently read an article in The New Yorker about the fact that the military is having a problem finding youth who meet the physical requirements of enlisting to defend our country. It’s never happened before in the history of America.

I remind my own kids, “Did you get your hour of play today?”

From the MSNBC article, Michelle tells us how she handle the shocking news that her daughters were too high on the BMI charts,

‘Small changes, big results’
The first lady said that over the next few months she made some small changes that got her daughters back on track. No more weekday TV. More attention to portion sizes. Low-fat milk. Water bottles in the lunch boxes. Grapes on the breakfast table. Apple slices at lunch. Colorful vegetables on the dinner table. “It was really very minor stuff, but these small changes resulted in some really significant improvements, and I didn’t know it would,” Mrs. Obama said.

It’s true. Small changes do lead to big results. I know it from my own health, my kids’ health, my lifestyle changes. Small changes are easy and achievable and if you do them often enough you do get big lifestyle changes.

I am so happy children will have a champion for the very important cause of childhood obesity. There could not be a more visible champion.

There’s more to this childhood obesity epidemic than our kids are too lazy, we’re not good enough police about what goes in our kids mouths and our little people don’t get enough play and exercise though.

I just saw Food, Inc. on the Watch It Now feature on Netflix.

It really highlights facts like these: if all the animals we eat consume corn and they feed them corn to make them fatter faster . . . .does it surprise us then that we and our children are also fatter faster? Not to mention all the other products, around 80% of what’s in the grocery store, are made of . . . corn, corn syrup, and other corn sugars?

Food, Inc. does one thing well. Outline just how seriously our government is involved in what we’re eating – which flows into the rising costs in our inefficient health care system – and just how much influence a few Corporations have over our childhood obesity problem, our national obesity problem.

Happily, and the movie highlights this truth very well in the end: it is ultimately CONSUMERS (read parents who buy their kids’ foods) who decide what supermarkets carry, what farmers farm and what corporations sell.

If you’re feeling a little powerless as you fork over the extra dough for the healthier foods let me point out one tiny little trend which should raise your feelings of empowerment: When I began writing about the issue of early puberty the issue of hormones in the milk supply came up, non-hormone milk cost quite a bit more than milk from cows given growth hormones. It was worth it. Not just to me, but to enough people that Walmart – the biggest retailer in the world – doesn’t carry growth hormone milk anymore. They don’t even stock it.

We – PARENTS, CONSUMERS – stopped the practice of feeding growth hormones to milk cows by refusing to buy that milk.

That’s how capitalism works every.single.time.

Next on the chopping block – high fructose corn syrup, a product that’s probably in 80% of the food supply and that’s making us and our kids fatter faster.

Michelle said she plans to roll out her childhood obesity campaign over the next few weeks. I am sure she’ll be planting the garden in the spring too. I can’t wait!

Photo Credit

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I will give away two copies of The Motherhood Manifesto. Its a totally awesome book discussing the mission of Momsrising.org, a non-profit organization which aims to help families with increased political participation of mothers. You’ll like it. You can use it as a Mother’s Day Gift.

On Saturday, Feb. 6 I will choose two people (using random.org) who have Fanned The Girl Revolution on Facebook. You get an extra entry if you “share” one of the articles or posts from The Girl Revolution Facebook Page.

Tell all your friends, post the contest on your own Facebook Pages.

This is how we grow our Tribe.

Oh, and Thank You. I appreciate every single one of you who come here to read or click over from a social networking site.

Fan The Girl Revolution on Facebook. Now.

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