Dear September, I love your lumbering yellow school buses and freshly sharpened No.2 yellow pencils. Your sweet sunlight with a tart edge of sadness that tastes like muscadine grapes. Your ripe full moons and corn- maze labyrinths. Your just-right weather, not too hot and not too cold. Your Libra balancing act between summer and winter, hello and goodbye. september Cover copy by Nikki Hardin, Art by Jackie Besteman first downs and seventh-inning stretches. Your mellow, apple-cider mood. Your laid-back Labor Day weekend and celestial Equinox celebration. Your breathtaking, earthshaking hymn to Demeter. Your sun-colored goldenrod and traveling butterflies. Your blue-eyed sky like autumn’s cathedral above us. “Autumn, the year’s last loveliest smile.” William Cullen Bryant skirt!isfree! www.skirt.com Your Fresh Starts, Columbia/Augusta/Aiken
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Transcript
Dear September,
I love your lumbering yellow school buses and
freshly sharpened No.2 yellow pencils. Your sweet
sunlight with a tart edge of sadness that tastes like
muscadine grapes. Your ripe full moons and corn-
maze labyrinths. Your just-right weather, not too
hot and not too cold. Your Libra balancing act
between summer and winter, hello and goodbye.
septemberAugusta, Aiken & Columbia
Cover copy by Nikki Hardin, Art by Jackie Besteman
first downs and seventh-inning stretches. Your
mellow, apple-cider mood. Your laid-back
Labor Day weekend and celestial Equinox
celebration. Your breathtaking, earthshaking
hymn to Demeter. Your sun-colored goldenrod
and traveling butterflies. Your blue-eyed sky like
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Lisa Bloom
To LiTTLe GirLs
How To
14 september 2011 www.skirt.com
For many more tips on how keep yourself and your daughter smart, check out Lisa Bloom’s new book, Think: Straight Talk for Women to Stay Smart in a Dumbed-Down World. Visit her website at think.tv, and follow Lisa on Twitter: twitter.com/LisaBloom.
I went to a dinner party at a friend’s home last weekend, and met her five-year-old daughter for the first time.
Little Maya was all curly brown hair, doe-like dark eyes, and adorable in her shiny pink nightgown. I wanted to squeal, “Maya, you’re so cute! Look at you! Turn around and model that pretty ruffled gown, you gorgeous thing!”
But I didn’t. I squelched myself. As I always bite my tongue when I meet little girls, restraining myself from my first impulse, which is to tell them how darn cute/pretty/beautiful/ well-dressed/well-manicured/well-coiffed they are.
What’s wrong with that? It’s our culture’s standard talking-to-little- girls icebreaker, isn’t it? And why not give them a sincere compliment to boost their self-esteem? Because they are so darling I just want to burst when I meet them, honestly.
Hold that thought for just a moment.This week ABC News reported that nearly half of all three- to six-year-old girls
worry about being fat. In my book, Think: Straight Talk for Women to Stay Smart in a Dumbed-Down World, I reveal that 15 to 18 percent of girls under 12 now wear mascara, eyeliner and lipstick regularly; eating disorders are up and self-esteem is down; and 25 percent of young American women would rather win America’s Next Top Model than the Nobel Peace Prize. Even bright, successful college women say they’d rather be hot than smart. A Miami mom just died from cosmetic surgery, leaving behind two teenagers. This keeps happening, and it breaks my heart.
Teaching girls that their appearance is the first thing you notice tells them that looks are more important than anything. It sets them up for di-eting at age five and foundation at age 11 and boob jobs at 17 and Botox at 23. As our cultural imperative for girls to be hot 24/7 has become the new normal, American women have become increasingly unhappy. What’s missing? A life of meaning, a life of ideas and reading books and being valued for our thoughts and accomplishments.
That’s why I force myself to talk to little girls as follows.“Maya,” I said, crouching down at her level, looking into her eyes, “very nice
to meet you.”“Nice to meet you too,” she said, in that trained, polite, talking-to-adults
good girl voice.“Hey, what are you reading?” I asked, a twinkle in my eyes. I love
books. I’m nuts for them. I let that show.Her eyes got bigger, and the practiced, polite facial expression gave
way to genuine excitement over this topic. She paused, though, a little shy of me, a stranger.
“I LOVE books,” I said. “Do you?”Most kids do.“YES,” she said. “And I can read them all by myself now!”“Wow, amazing!” I said. And it is, for a five-year-old. You go
on with your bad self, Maya.
“What’s your favorite book?” I asked.“I’ll go get it! Can I read it to you?”Purplicious was Maya’s pick and a new one to me, as Maya
snuggled next to me on the sofa and proudly read aloud every word, about our heroine who loves pink but is tormented by a group of girls at school who only wear black. Alas, it was about
girls and what they wore, and how their wardrobe choices defined their identities. But after Maya closed the final page, I steered the conversation to the deeper issues in the book: mean girls and peer pressure and not going
along with the group. I told her my favorite color in the world is green, because I love nature, and she was down with that.
Not once did we discuss clothes or hair or bodies or who was pretty. It’s surpris-ing how hard it is to stay away from those topics with little girls, but I’m stubborn.
I told her that I’d just written a book, and that I hoped she’d write one too one day. She was fairly psyched about that idea. We were both sad when Maya had to go to bed, but I told her next time to choose another book and we’d read it and talk about it. Oops. That got her too amped up to sleep, and she came down from her bedroom a few times, all jazzed up.
So, one tiny bit of opposition to a culture that sends all the wrong messages to our girls. One tiny nudge towards valuing female brains. One brief moment of in-tentional role modeling. Will my few minutes with Maya change our multibillion dollar beauty industry, reality shows that demean women, our celebrity-manic culture? No. But I did change Maya’s perspective for at least that evening.
Try this the next time you meet a little girl. She may be surprised and unsure at first, because few ask her about her mind, but be patient and stick with it. Ask her what she’s reading. What does she like and dislike, and why? There are no wrong answers. You’re just generating an intelligent conversation that respects her brain. For older girls, ask her about current events issues: pollution, wars, school budgets slashed. What bothers her out there in the world? How would she fix it if she had a magic wand? You may get some intriguing answers. Tell her about your ideas and accomplishments and your favorite books. Model for her what a thinking woman says and does.
And let me know the response you get at twitter.com/lisabloom and on Facebook.Here’s to changing the world, one little girl at a time.
“Teaching girls that their appearance is the first thing you notice
tells them that looks are more important than anything. It sets them up for dieting at age five
and foundation at age 11 and boob jobs at 17 and Botox at 23.”
www.skirt.com september 2011 15
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Two years after Dr. George Tiller was murdered for
performing late-term abortions, the female doctor who
plans to reopen a clinic in Wichita, KS, has started receiv-
ing death threats. Kansas has enacted numerous pieces
of anti-abortion legislation in 2011 and recently denied
licenses to two of the three clinics still operating in the
state, which had 15 clinics in operation 20 years ago.
In July, an em-
ployee at the Dol-
lywood theme park
in Pigeon Forge,
TN, asked Olivier
Odom, a partner
in a lesbian couple,
to turn the t-shirt
she was wearing
inside out because
its slogan, Mar-
riage is so Gay, was
“inappropriate” in a
family park. Odom
complied in order
to avoid a scene in
front of the children
in her group, but she
and her partner filed
a complaint with the
park, asking it to be-
come more inclusive
of LGBT families.
“It’s very dear to me, the issue
of gay marriage, or as I like to
call it: marriage. You know,
because I had lunch today, not
gay lunch. I parked my car; I
didn’t gay park it.” Liz Feldman
Female enrollment is up at business schools,
and the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton
School of Business leads the pack with a re-
cord 45% for the class of 2013. Deputy Director
of Admissions Ankur Kumar says that female
alumnae’s involvement in the recruitment pro-
cess is a large reason for growth. “[Alums] are
the featured stars of the show when we do our
presentations around the globe.”
Feldman
Saudi Arabia is currently the only nation in the world that prohibits women from driving or obtaining a driver’s license, which undercuts the com-mitment by Saudi leaders to abolish legislation and prac-tices that discriminate against women. Recently, 14 women members of the U.S. Senate called upon the King of Saudi Arabia to lift the ban, which limits women’s access to work, public places and commercial facilities.
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village453 Highland Avenue
Augusta, GA706.729.9125
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r in
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Nikki Hardin is the founder and publisher of skirt! magazine. She blogs at fridaville.com. Nikki Hardin is the founder and publisher of skirt! magazine. She blogs at fridaville.com.
My favorite way to escape at work, in an airport or a waiting room is through my Bose headphones. When I have to write or need breathing/thinking/dreaming space, I plug into iTunes and shut out the world.
I covet an ImagineNations™ globe made by San Francisco artist Wendy Gold. If “To the Rescue” didn’t cost the earth, I might splurge.
planetnikki[ a v i s u a l j o u r n a l ]
Drawing and painting—making anything with my hands—shuts down the endless background chatter in my brain that’s filled with worry, shoulds, shames.
To Hawaii for the shock and awe of big waves that
To In-Love Land where adrenaline trumps loneliness.
My subconscious telling me to keep my feet on the ground,
But my night dreams are usually about getting on
shake the ground. To Spain for siestas to solve
Always daydreaming of
escape.
losing my way.
my heart in the here and
now.
my insomnia. To Paris to become an exotic expat.
To Croatia for the hell of it.
the wrong plane, forgetting my luggage, losing my ticket,
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