On the heels of One Billion Rising, celebrated on the 15th anniversary of V-Day, as one billion women and those who love them rose worldwide to bring awareness to the issues surrounding violence against women, I have been thinking about interpersonal violence in our own country. There appears to be a distinct disconnect between the message we want to send to girls and young women-that they can love and respect themselves and acknowledge that they have needs of their own that come first-and the message they are receiving-that they should look or behave a certain way in order to receive love and acceptance.

So why aren’t girls and women getting the message that they are fine just the way they are? Perhaps those of us trying to send this message are getting drowned out by the sheer volume of socially constructed messages bombarding girls and young women every day. Examples of objectification and violence are thrown in our faces constantly. While the recent charges of rape against high school football players in Steubenville, Ohio–young men who allegedly raped a 16-year-old fellow student last August while other students videotaped the unconscious girl–may seem extreme, we see other seemingly unimaginable stories day after day. Take the story of the “fantasy team draft” created by ninth-grade boys at the elite Landon School in Maryland in 2010, where the boys chose girls, rated them, and planned sexual conquests as part of a competition in which money would eventually be exchanged. Then, there was the violent murder of a University of Virginia lacrosse player by her abusive ex-boyfriend, a former Landon student.

It is no wonder that young women are so confused. If boys today are being sent to prestigious private schools like Landon only to be taught to objectify and debase young women by drafting them to teams with such names as “The Southside Slampigs,” and the punishment for planning sexual conquests is a slap on the wrist and a “boys will be boys” mentality, then the cycle will only continue. The former Landon student who murdered his ex-girlfriend had been seen previously choking her. He had also attacked a male teammate he thought had kissed her, and he became so out of control with a female police officer during a drunken rampage that he had to be tasered. But apparently everyone looked the other way, and through silence, the behavior continued to be condoned.

“In fully accepting your creative power, you honor and respect your soul and remind others to do the same.” ~Sonia Choquette

Creative drive, empowerment and advocacy is clearly emanated through the souls of many women. But in recent years, we’ve seen a decline in these attributes among today’s youth and The Girl’s Guide to Swagger is on a mission to make sure we don’t continue down this path. When those strengths are not drawn upon, women as a whole lose out. Fortunately, we all can nurture each other so that this doesn’t happen.  Ashley Marinaccio shows us how we can as she works to cultivate these important attributes through the girls and women involved in Girl Be Heard, a theater collective that uses acting to empower young women ages 12 through 21 to become brave, confident, socially conscious leaders while exploring their own lives.

Performers from Girl Be Heard

Girl Be Heard was founded four years ago by Marinaccio, who is the now Artistic Director. She is an activist and artist and her work has been seen in many venues across the country such as global TED conferences, The White House, United Nations, and on tour across the United States. She holds a M.A. in Performance Studies from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and a Bachelor’s of the Arts in theatre directing and sociology/anthropology with minors in women/gender and Middle Eastern from Pace University.Marinaccio’s enjoys utilizing theatre for peace building, healing, and empowerment and her vast background led her to be the most suitable person to begin this organization back at the Estrogenius Theatre Festival  in 2008, where she was asked to write a play for teenage girls performing at the festival. But instead, she changed things up a bit by having the girls write and act out the plays themselves.“It was apparent that I should not be writing this for them (the plays girls were performing). They needed to be empowered to write it themselves. So we had each of the girls get into discussions.

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Sheena Williams, President, SheWill, Inc.

When you are financially empowered, you are more able to control many aspects of your life. It’s an essential building block that many people unfortunately don’t seem to receive in their upbringing. This is reflected in the current state of America’s economy, as well as within the rest of the world.

Fortunately, there are brilliant people like Sheena Williams in the world who are working to change things. She is the founder of SheWill, Inc., an organization geared toward improving financial literacy in girls ages eight to 17 and families.

“I teach how to be responsible with money management. I also teach career empowerment and entrepreneurship,” said Williams.  “Basically what I do is try to prepare girls for life skills before they graduate high school and go off to college, so they’ll have fundamental financial and career skills before leaving their parents house.”

When Williams graduated from high school, all her dad ever told her was to be responsible with money. And as an 18- year- old living on her own, she didn’t know what that meant. “I made mistakes and I just don’t want the future generation to have to go through those obstacles that I did,” Williams said.

Williams has since earned an MBA in Public Administration and is the President of SheWill, Inc. During one of the company’s seminars or events, girls learn about savings, budgeting, and philanthropy. They are taught the difference between a credit card, debit card and checking account. Classes also learn what credit is, how to establish credit and different forms of credit such as store credit. They are able to review a credit card statement and learn about interest rates.

“We do simple interest for them and a little bit of compounding interest for savings but mostly interest rates for credit cards,” said Williams.

Sheena hosts classes and seminars throughout her hometown of Atlanta, Georgia and recently has been able to start working with school districts and organizations across the country. Read more…

Sonali

When you speak to Sonali Argade, you can’t help but smile. Her energy is infectious. And when you listen to her music, your smile will grow even wider. When you find out what she’s doing with the profits of her music sales, your heart will smile as well.

Sonali is one of the newest singers in the pop music world. The young Floridian recently moved to New York City this past September to study at the Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music. Before that, Sonali was involved in music for most of her life. She played jazz guitar at the Players School of Music, attended Berklee College of Music’s Five Week Summer Performance Program for Voice, and then attended the School of Rock Program. At age 18, she is now attending New York University (NYU), while improving her skills at the institute.

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Shantay Carter

Integrity. A word defined as “soundness of moral character; honesty or the state of being whole, or undiminished.” Integrity is strong value for the Girls Guide to Swagger  and we look for the opportunity to recognize organizations who support this value.  Today we are featuring Shantay Carter and her organization, Women Of Integrity, Inc.

Shantay is on a mission to support and empower women in her community to foster the confidence they need to accomplish their future goals. The organization carries out their mission by offering volunteer services, professional mentoring programs and also participating in community outreach events throughout Hempstead, New York in Long Island and other near-by communities.

Carter is a woman of strong identity and by nature, she has always liked to help people. Over the years, she transferred those skills into a successful career as a nurse and is now refining those skills even further, along with nearly 30 other volunteers working with Women of Integrity. Her motivation for starting the organization began when she noticed that many women, especially young women and girls in her community didn’t seem to possess self-confidence needed to live well-developed lives. Read more…

What do you think of when you see a group of teenage girls? Do you assume that they are good people, loving daughters, creative and brilliant or do you assume something else? Is it possible that teenage girls have gotten a bad name because some of them act out or get in trouble?

Ruby Taylor has launched a new campaign asking people to tell the truth about teenage girls – that they are beautiful, smart, caring, respectful and compassionate. Ruby has a gift of seeing the best in everyone, especially teenage girls, who are often misunderstood and misjudged. So often if we expect the worst from someone – we will get it. What about trying to expect the best from everyone?

By treating everyone with respect, we encourage each person to value themselves, which grows self-esteem. If girls lack confidence and swagger, it may be because they have not been treated with respect. Read more…

Guest blog by Sherri Henderson, co-founder National Minority Educators Association for Charter Schools (NMEACS)

We believe in all students being successful regardless of color or gender. It is not just a matter of promoting the boys and training them to become men, and thus saying they are the only designated leaders of a global market. To that we say nonsense!

We also need to support the girls and prepare them to become the leaders of the global market as well. To the point, the 4^th grade is too young and too early for a girl’s self-esteem to peak!

“Daddy’s little girl” has just as much right and promise to become the next President, Astronaut, Electrician, Fortune 500 C.E.O., Attorney, Small Business Owner, Engineer, Scientist, Advocate, U.S. Congress Representative (there are currently no Black females in the U.S. Senate), whatever it is she sets her sights on. We need to prepare all students to have an opportunity to aspire to greatness. We say don’t hate, motivate!

Many women experience swagger and success in the classroom.

Wendy says “My swagger in school began in a computer science class. The professor asked a difficult question and everyone in class decided to support the class brain’s approach to the problem.  I saw that there was a problem with that strategy and stuck to my own approach.  I was the only one in class to get it right.”

My swagger moment was deciding to become a college instructor when I was in a class taught by an opinionated chauvinistic man.  Read more…