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 Not the girl i used to be 
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I attended the lecture Not the girl i used to be on thursday october 8. the speaker talked about the history of girls, and different roles they have played, the way these roles have changed, and the challenges they face. i learned some interesting statistics about girls, for example, 70% of the worlds 130 million out-of-school children are girls. the facts like this that the speaker presented facinated me. she seemed very knowledgable in her subject, as well as very interested in it, which made her a good speaker. she also had a creative presentation, where she talked about well know female characters in books, particuarly nancy drew. she stated that nancy drew looks like she has it all, and as a child, she really enjoyed the books. however, she became more facinated with nancy drew, and realized nancy drew is very complex. as the speech continued, she moved through time and discussed other books, such as the "ghosts and girls" books. she discussed the changes that women went through in time which shows in novels. to wrap up, the speaker showed images of girls in adds for well known companies such as calvin cline, or bebe. one of the most disturbing things to the speaker and probably most of the audience was the last image, because it showed very young girls. though most people think these are useful ways to advertise for things such as clothing, or cologne, the speaker gave good arguments for why there is no excuse for the media using girls as sexual objects. i enjoyed this talk, and it made me think about a topic that i do not hear about often, but i realize it is an important situation.

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Catherine Langley


Thu Oct 08, 2009 5:43 pm
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I also attended the presentation of Not The Girl I Use To Be, and found it very interesting. I could tell the speaker was very interested in this subject and wanted to the word across on how the image of girls has changed throughout the years. Like Catherine said, she really focused on Nancy Drew and how she was THE girl and everyone wanted to be her but that would also be living in a non-realistic world. She talked about the ladies of England and how their image came across as this very high class and elegant way. But what the speaker did well and I believe it touched everyone in the audience and everyone could related to were the pictures she should of how girls are portrayed today. How magazines give off this sex appeal of women and with that comes the common terms such as whore and slut, but these pictures is how companies advertise items. Every picture had a picture of a girl with her legs spread open and some had girls where men were trying to kill them or the girls were locked up in a cage, and where I usually just flip past this in my magazine, many girls see that and see that is how they should live their lives as this caged up individual. In gerenal the speaker did a great job and got the message acrossed to us all to where we can spread the word on the issue.

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Hillary Coffman


Sun Oct 11, 2009 9:02 am
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I also attended "The Girl I Used To Be" on Thursday night. I really didn't know what to expect at this lecture, and the speaker opened my eyes to a topic I haven't exactly studied before. I have always known that being a girl is hard, but I have never learned about it from an educational point of view. The study of girls is an actual field- and an important one. The speaker was right- girlhood is stuck in the middle of childhood and adolescence. It's a very difficult period of life for girls all over the world. Luckily in America, girls receive the same education that boys do. But in other countries and cultures, being a girl means a whole different world. The girls do the domestic work and look after the family; they don't go to school. It's easy to believe that we have come so far with gender equality, but that isn't the case in a lot of the world. We also looked at different advertisements and how they depict girls. Obviously, it was very disturbing. I just don't understand how it is still okay to portray young girls as sexual objects. There was one picture we looked at of two young girls (probably six years old) and they were bending over a fence. You could see their underwear. Why would this be an acceptable way to try to sell a brand of clothing? As educators, we need to be aware of how hard the years of girlhood are for our students. They will go through struggles and hardships and we must be supportive of them during this hard time in their lives.


Sun Oct 11, 2009 11:43 am
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I also attended the lecture "Not the Girl I Use To Be" by a professor here at ASU. Her presentation was on Reading the Lives of Girls: Values, Culture, and the Search for Self. She explains that girls are the hardest population to reach. She then threw out some statistics that she had found about girls such as 70% of the world's 130 million out-of-school children are girls and girls are 5 times more likely to be HIV infected than boys worldwide. The professor argues that girlhood is raced, sexed, classed, and socially constructed. She related this topic to the Nancy Drew books. As a kid, she was always fascinated with these books. It wasn't until she was much older when she really understood the purpose of them. She calls the Nancy Drew books a cultural messenger. I agree with her because these books are intended to send a message to its readers which are young girls. She also says that since times have changed, girls are given their own choices but are limited due to the outlook our society views girls today. I believe girls are able to make their own choices but often make the wrong decisions due to media such as television, magazines, and newspapers. At the end of her presentation, she shows various pictures of girls in commercial or magazine ads. These ads are basically using these girls for sexual objects and ordinary girls are seeing this as the perfect role model. I think it is very tough to be a girl in this day and age. Overall I liked the presentation and learned a lot. She was very passionate and knowledgeable about this subject.

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Tue Oct 13, 2009 11:50 am
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I also attended the "Not the Girl I Use to Be" lecture. The speaker mainly focused on how girls are portrayed in literature throughout time. She started with Nancy Drew, but then went on through the history of girl character icons throughout time. She analyzed how younger women to little girls are portrayed in the media, such as in advertisements. Many of the young women are shown in little to no clothes at all in very provocative positions, like with their legs spread. The little girls are also positioned in very inappropriate ways. We discussed how women are often thought of as weak and in need of a man. This was well portrayed in the recent phenomenon of the Twilight series. Bella, the main character, literally gives up her life for a man, saying that nothing else matters as much as him. This is the kind of message that we are sending to young girls, which adds to the rush of children growing up and maturing too quickly. Little girls are now wearing increased amounts of makeup and wearing extremely inappropriate clothes. The question is, what are we suppose to do about this? I highly doubt that we can really do much globally about this issue because the women in weakness, along with anything sexual, sells so that's what is going to be used in entertainment and the media. I believe that many people desire these traits, unfortunately. I believe the best thing that we as women can do is be a positive role model ourselves and really talk to girls when their young about these issues and how ambitious and strong they as individuals should strive to be.


Tue Oct 13, 2009 8:47 pm
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I attended the seminar “Not the girl I used to beâ€


Tue Oct 20, 2009 12:15 pm
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i also attended not the girl i used to be in the belk library building. i was one of the only guys there while the overwhelming majority of the group was girls. she talked about a lot of things but the thing i found most interesting was how girls are influenced in areas of the media that i wouldn't ever realize. one of the focus's was on the new book twilight, which i have not read, but my sister and a lot of the girls, and one guy, i know have read it, however i have seen the movie. I didn't think anything about how girls were influence by the main female character, bella. she is so in love with edward that she would do anything, and i mean anything, to be with him. the lady talked about how this was so and before she brought it to my attention i had never thought of it that way. i would hope girls would not be influenced by this, but, some of them most likely are.

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Dudley Raye


Wed Dec 09, 2009 5:16 pm
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