(More Than) Grrrl Power! Girls Studies at UCF

Check it! The Girl Project Kate Engelbrecht is an artist working on a national photography initiative called THE GIRL PROJECT For the past 2 years she been sending disposable cameras to teenage girls living in the US and asking them to document their lives. The focus of the project is to look at adolescence from a teenage girls perspective. Given the abundance of representations of teenage girlhood, she wanted to explore it from their point of view rather than an adults. She hopes to complete the project in December of this year. At that time she will have sent 5,000 cameras to girls living in rural urban and suburban America. The collection of images they have taken will be a library of photographs (thousands strong) that she plans to edit into a photography book and traveling exhibition. The Girl Project is a national collection of photographs taken by teenage girls. The photographs represent teenage girlhood and life as seen through the eyes of young women in America. The stro...

The Girls Health Initiative Presents… “Adolescent Eating Disorders: What They Don’t Eat Might Hurt Them” Diane M. Straub, MD, MPH Assistant Professor of Pediatrics, General Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine USF College of Medicine & Lee Davidson, Ophelia Project Hope Speaker These days girls are faced with overwhelming images of what society thinks is beautiful. These images can have long lasting, damaging effects on girls. Please join us for this program, which will include information on the prevention and intervention of eating disorders as well as a personal story from a survivor. Thursday, April 16, 2009, 6:30-7:30pm Tampa General Hospital Hyde Park Community Health Education Center 740 S. Village Circle Tampa, FL 33606 Please RSVP for this event by emailing Jodi Knowles at jknowles@opbi.org As always a special thanks to the Lina Castellano Fund and the Hillsborough County Medical Association Foundation for making the Girls Health Initiative Speaking Ser...

Erin (Toni) Williams posted this on Facebook. It's so well-written, honest, and relevant to our blog I thought I'd share. Plus, I'm teaching this book in Girls Studies in the Fall. I really liked this Amazon.com review for the book, The Purity Myth: How America's Obsession with Virginity Is Hurting Young Women , by Jessica Valenti of Feministing.com. I haven't read the book yet (I'm definitely getting it though), but I'm already thinking of all the "slut shaming" I participated in as young as 5th and 6th grade and throughout the following decade or so. In junior high and some of high school I was definitely influenced, on some level, by the idea that women who are sexually active before marriage are worth less than "pure" women who wait. In my mind, this did not generally apply to men, because, after all, the point so often reiterated was that we girls, as future wives, would be expected to sexually please our future husbands, in particul...

Are you interested in being a part of a powerful movement that will help transform the lives of the women at UCF and our local high school girls? Are you passionate about helping others and serving your community? W.I.S.E.:Women Improving Self Esteem is an emerging service organization here at UCF that will take effect Fall 2009. Our goal is to bring awareness to self esteem and to empower women to realize and live up to their TRUE POTENTIAL. And we are looking for a FEW GOOD WOMEN to ignite the change we need to see... Please visit our Facebook group "W.I.S.E.:Women Improving Self Esteem" for more information on available positions and on how to apply. Applications are due April 7, 2009 at 3pm in Colbourn Hall rm 411 (front desk) Please contact Francine Bacchus (772) 634 0485/ franbacchus@gmail.com for any questions or concerns.