| Table of Contents: |
| Girls and Their Growing Sense of Sexuality |
| Challenging the Media |
| Being A Strong & Independent Woman |
Girls and Their Growing Sense of Sexuality
Gurl.com is a “builder of community” (Grisso and Weiss 34) that tackles issues important to girls ages 13 and up in a matter-of-fact way.
Topics surrounding the issues of sex and sexuality that girls often find embarrassing and awkward to discuss in person are freely discussed in the site’s relationships and sex board.
This place provides a safe outlet of communication for girls to discuss with other girls about similar issues and questions regarding their growing sense of sexuality. It serves as a reminder that wider groups can have an influence on one’s identity and that others are there to help along the way (Armitage and Roberts 39).
At a time when “peers are a major source of validation and socialization for adolescent girls,” (Coleman 138) I can imagine how being able to relate to millions of other girls on this site would give way to feelings of normalcy, of no longer feeling like an outsider.
What is even more empowering is how websites such as About-Face.org challenges the messages that the media sends out to females. The site is a “launching pad” from which girls (and women) can speak out against advertisings in fashion magazines depicting unrealistic images of female beauty (Merskin 59).
The site challenges girls to think about what they are seeing in the media, to understand it and resist conforming to the harmful stereotypes of females (About-Face.org).
This site gives way to a more positive outlook for girls, empowering them and encouraging them to create their own ideas of what it means to be a beautiful girl and to shape their own identities different from what the media tells them to be.
Being A Strong & Independent Woman
Blue Jean Online (BJO) was a companion website to the magazine founded and edited by Sherry Handel and content created by young women all over the world that was published between 1996-1998.
The site and magazine’s goal was to publish what young women all over the world were thinking, saying and doing (Walsh 73).
The site challenged the dominant stereotypes about men and women and argued that media should be creating guiding principles that are meant to empower young girls and to show them as more than just sexual objects or as passive weak damsels (Steiner 1995).
By emphasizing that women are independent and strong a window of insight is created for adolescent girls. It influences the way young girls think of themselves as females growing up in a media-saturated society.