"I can play baseball, you can too!"

All girls need some sort of outlet. We always have lots going on in our minds and lives, and things can get especially heavy in girlhood. If all girls were given an outlet in order to create their own cultural productions, I think it would have nothing but a positive effect. Individual girls would never have to feel as alone as they do at tiems. There would be a place for answers and self-expression when parents or best friends just don’t understand. Girls could connect and make good friends, friends that would be, as the seven-year-old feminist Ruby describes: “someone you can count on, someone who is honest with you, and someone who cares for you”. All of this could be possible, even if they were thousands of miles away. Girls could reach out for comfort when it seems nowhere to be found. Society as a whole would also benefit. It is due time that we learn to listen to children growing up in this world. They too are experiencing the changes in this world first hand, and their opinions and feelings are extremely valid. Many of the girls in the Red stories this week expressed extreme distress over what is going on in the world. Ignoring what girls have to say can often be silencing. We would not want girls to stop speaking out all together! Society continues to turn a blind eye to what young people, especially young girls, have to say and an act like that can only produce negative outcomes. I wonder if anyone ever thought that maybe the solutions might lie within the minds of the youth. There’s an idea!

It is very important to seek out and listen to girls’ voices not only for their benefit, but ours also. Girls need to know that they are important. Their feelings, thoughts, and opinions are just as vital as only one else’s. It is never good for a young girl to foster feelings of unimportance. Adults often dismiss young people’s thoughts as ignorant and uninformed. Driver describes a user info headline of a transyouth group that states, “If you don’t want to get eaten alive by the adults for saying the wrong thing when you post about something, then here is a good place to post and ask questions.” (p176) Girls need to know they will not be judged when expressing themselves. These are the women of our future, and we need to know what they’re thinking! I think that we should also seek out girls’ voices to check ourselves. As a women it is important to me to encourage young girls in knowing that they are beautiful inside and out, and that they can do absolutely anything they dream of. Like Dani Cox in “Ms. President”, it is crucial to me that all girls know they’re extraordinary. This should be a policy that everyone goes by. When listening to girls’ voices we can see how well this message is getting across, and how much the media is succeeding in destroying girls’ sense of self. A young girl always has and always will have something to say.