Girls Leadership Institute

When I attended the Girls Leadership Institute I was going into my freshman year. For most people, this is a pretty transitional time. Most incoming freshmen are attending a new school, or at least a new division of their school. My school was different. High school started in 7^th grade, and so I was pretty sure I knew everything I needed to. I think I thought of myself as a pretty confident person. How I measured this confidence, I’m not sure, but I think it had something to do with standards I compared myself with. Did I think I was pretty? Yeah, I was basically satisfied with my appearance. Did I think I was smart? I had good grades and I went to a good school. Did I feel comfortable meeting new people? Hey, I was at GLI, and I’d just made a ton of friends, so yeah, obviously! In a way, I wish I could back to my fourteen-year-old self, and sort of do a reality check. I think I would have sat myself down and asked myself different questions.  

 In honor of the end of Black History Month and the beginning of Women’s History Month, today’s Random Five spotlights five young women you’ve probably never read about in any history textbook. All of them stared down racial and gender discrimination to live their lives out loud – and changed American history in the process.

On November 14^th, 1960, six-year old Ruby Bridges became the face of integration after her parents made the brave decision to risk the family’s safety to send her to a better school. Angry crowds yelled insults and pelted Ruby and her mother with objects as federal marshals escorted them into William Frantz Elementary School in New Orleans for Ruby’s first day of first grade. Many parents withdrew their children because of integration and only one teacher, a Boston native, was willing to teach Ruby. She was a class of one for the entire school year; she ate lunch alone and her teacher ran around the room with her for recess. When Ruby grew up she founded the Ruby Bridges Foundation that educates school children on ending racism.

 Kesha Rose Sebert wakes up in the morning feeling like P. Diddy. Then the young, blonde, singer-songwriter brushes her teeth with a bottle of Jack and hits the city.  I’m paraphrasing Sebert, better known as “Ke$ha” in her popular song “Tik Tok,” which is about partying, getting drunk, and being the center of attention. These themes may not seem unusual to most people. After all, our culture puts a lot of emphasis on sex, money, drugs, and alcohol. But, something about the comparison between Ke$ha and P. Diddy seems a little off. Could it be that, although she’s reiterating themes we hear all the time, Ke$ha is actually one in a group of fresh, young, female, pop music mavericks? The past year has brought forward a few women who are stepping all over the good girl image, while simultaneously embracing a bad girl image many of us have never seen before. We’re used to seeing girls partying and dancing in music videos, but it’s always behind male rappers who brag about sex and money, while often degrading women. Can girls be “lookin’ like pimps”? Can they have “swagger”? Ask Lady Gaga and Ke$ha, who are proving to be some of 2010’s most interesting women as they dirtying up their acts, with alcohol, dollar signs, sex….and maybe messages of empowerment.

The girls in Club Real Girl, our after school program, have me rethinking the power of gossip. We started Club Real Girl by asking girls about their interests and obsessions. One idea kept reoccurring: girls talking behind each other’s back. So we started our program by exploring just that.

Twenty-four fifth and sixth grade girls worked in small groups to create five tableaux portraying different gossip situations. We then explored the internal voice of each of the characters in these scenes: the gossipers, the bystanders and the victims of gossip.

As the characters spoke, patterns started to emerge. At GLI we generally teach that gossip’s impact comes from its damage on the victim’s reputation. When her reputation is suffers, her relationships change, and therein lies the real impact—not the words themselves (sticks and stones…), but what those words do to reputations and relationships.

The “A-ha” moment to me came in hearing the internal voices of the victim characters. The victim in each of the five groups echoed a similar thought pattern: she was believing the gossip about her. She was starting to think that her shoes or accent were weird, that she was, in fact, a loser. She wasn’t able to brush it off as “just rumors.” The gossip actually affected the most important reputation in her life: her reputation of herself.