Yo Mamas Media's blog

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Last night I saw Shout It Out, billed as "the real high school musical." It's a major motion picture made in Vermont by a Vermont company, Kingdom County Productions, and based on lives of real teens in Vermont who participated in the original Voices Project, a theatre production that toured here and was supported by Blue Cross Blue Shield of Vermont. Bess O'Brien directed it. The actors are teens from Vermont and the music was composed by teens too. The aim was to create a production that reflected the real lives and problems of teens.

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Ever wonder if all those celebrity baby bumps and cute children in PG-13 movies, preteen TV shows, and populating the pages of Us and People magazine matter? Consider this article about the Pregnancy Boom at Gloucester High in Time magazine.

We say . . .

Everything, theater, even science, is about being hot today. And that bugs us. Take the recent Newsweek article on Girl Geeks and how hot they are. ( http://www.newsweek.com/id/140457 ) It's not that any girl can do science, a 70's girl power theme, it has to be reinvented for the 21st century to say HOT girls do science, bypassing all the other girls along the way who don't buy into type/image hot or not.

And check out this blog on beauty!!! From our friends at alternet.org.
What's So Great About Beauty? by Shannon Shupp
( http://www.alternet.org/reproductivejustice/87636/ )

Speaking of My Beautiful Mommy (see post below), in study after study we see the impact of a culture for girls so toxic that such a book is touted unapologetically on national news shows, ensuring the author millions in new clientele and books sales. A recent media survey of 3000 women found that appearance and weight trumped disease as cause for women's concern -- 84% of the women surveyed felt they were overweight and 56% were concerned about diet/weight, while just 20% express concern about heart health and 18% about diabetes.

In 2007 plastic surgeons performed nearly 11.7 million cosmetic procedures in the U.S. alone, 91% of them on women. That’s a lot of women, and since 67% of the procedures were done on 19-50 year olds, that’s a lot of mothers. Enter the new children’s book, My Beautiful Mommy, aimed at answering all sorts of questions that children 4-7 may have about mom’s operation.

We recently came across a blog entry decrying a new game invented by ChampagneforLadies. In it girls are invited to “Lie, bitch, flirt your way to the top of the high school ladder” in order to “Become the Coolest Girl in School.” The inventors say, perhaps tongue in cheek that Coolest Girl in School is Grand Theft Auto for girls. Now the blogger made some good points, for example, how are 10 year old girls going to get the satire? And how is this different from other video games like Grand Theft Auto?

Counting is so simple, so basic, so important. We counted the numbers of boys and girls on sugary cereal boxes, on the covers of board games, in the action section of toy aisles, in Newbury Award winning books, and we reported studies that counted the number of boys and girls in G-rated films, and other forms of media. This was our way of showing where the girls aren't, sure, but more importantly we did this because numbers give a clear and present message to girls (and boys) about who should be doing, wearing, listening to, reading, and playing with what.

Multiple reactions abound to the youtube video showing Miss South Carolina, contestant for the Miss Teen USA pageant, fumbling over an answer to the question she received in the pageant's nod to intelligence. Some saw a scared teenager who couldn't find her words and these people rushed to protect her, as one would one's own child. Some saw the failure of the U.S. education system. Some saw stupidity, and compared her to our fumbling president. Some just felt sorry for the poor girl and depicted her as simply dealing with a brain white-out. Why so much attention?