queen of connection | Shelby L. Phillips

Shopping For The Holidays

December 4, 2012 at 7:44 pm Leave a comment

My friends at MissRepresentation.org have been diligently working to challenge the media to portray women and girls in a positive light, to show them expressing important ideas and opinions, instead of being hyper-sexualized and objectified.

I stand with MissRepresentation.org, ToGetHerThere.org, SeeJane.org, and many others, who believe in that inspiring future. With MissRep’s recent victory in persuading Spirit Halloween to remove unnecessarily sexualized language describing children’s costumes from their website, worldwide film screenings reaching thousands of viewers, and recent power plays on Black Friday to avoid sexiest products, I’d say progress is being made.

To that end, with December upon us, it’s essential that we continue to stay aware of the media we are consuming and sharing with our friends and family. We hold the purse strings. We vote with our dollars. We can send the biggest message of all by NOT buying. Millions of movies, books, music, magazines and video games will be given as gifts over the next few weeks. We must be conscious of the way our women and girls, our sisters, cousins, mothers and friends, are represented in every THING we buy and make sure to support products that inspire and empower the gender.

A Mighty Girl.com has lists of girl-positive gifts in almost every category of media — check it out! #MediaWeLike on Pinterest highlights media recommended by the MissRep community for people of all ages. Lastly, of course, MissRepresentation itself is currently available on DVD and can be a great way to talk about media awareness with the ones you love because Media Literacy is an important human issue.

So as you shop this holiday season, keep in mind the old character building adage what I say and how I say it, tells others the kind of person I am. Before you buy ask yourself this question, “Does this gift acrately reflect the kind of notions, ideas and values I want to perpetuate in the collective consciousness of life?” If so, then give freely and with an open heart. If not, then thank you for being honest, and maybe you can find something else that better reflects who you are and the kind of world you’d rather live in. We are the change. Happy shopping.

Entry filed under: Celebrations, Connection, Parenting. Tags: collective consciousness, holidays, media, media literacy, Miss Representation, purse strings, SeeJane.org, Shopping, ToGetHerThere.org.