“Turn Beauty Inside Out, Maine” helps turn around negative messages sent to girls.
AUBURN – “Turn Beauty Inside Out, Maine” will present a video/discussion of “What a Girl Wants” at 7 p.m. Wednesday, May 21, at the Auburn Middle School. The program is called “The Role of Media in Shaping Self-Image for Girls.” Parents, teachers, coaches and other adults who work with and care about girls are invited. The program is free.
“Turn Beauty Inside Out, Maine” is being piloted in Lewiston and Auburn this spring by the University of Maine Cooperative Extension’s Gender Project. The program is about changing negative cultural and media messages about what it means to be a girl or a woman in America today. It also provides “Beauty Blooms Within” stickers to florists to put on prom flowers.
The advertising, television, fashion, movie and magazine industries depict “ideal” girls and women as thin, alluring and sexy. As a result, 42 percent of girls in grades one to three want to be thinner; between 1996 and 1998 teenage cosmetic surgery nearly doubled; more than five million Americans suffer from eating disorders; and 90 percent of them are adolescent girls and young women.
“Turn Beauty Inside Out” began nationally in 2000 as a campaign of “New Moon Magazine.” It is about changing the cultural/media concept that beauty is less than skin deep, to beauty being about good hearts, great works and activism. Each May “New Moon” sponsors a national Turn Beauty Inside Out Day. This year it is May 21, the date of the Auburn program.
The program will go statewide in the fall with a media campaign, educational materials and community activism. For more information, contact the Androscoggin/Sagadahoc Office of the University on Maine Cooperative Extension at 353-5550.
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