The Strength to Resist

Yesterday I attended a film screening of a documentary called "The Strength to Resist: Media's Impact on Women and Girls" made by Cambridge Documentary films. As you can see, I took copious notes. Yikes! The film answered some of the questions and problems that the shift to image-based media has caused in society, especially in the minds of adolescent young women. The makers of the film were leading authorities who interviewed thousands of young women and who offered practical solutions and best tactics for reclaiming our culture for girls and women.

Here are some points that were made:

• girls are generally strong through childhood (up to about age 10) and then they begin to lose this strength and self esteem as they enter adolescence. They know what they want to be when they grow up. They have direction and goals. They do well in school They want to become somebody who contributes to society. Their inner world is strong and they don't have much exposure to the outer world.


• About age 11 - 13, they start to change. Some begin to have learning problems, behavior problems and eating problems. Their inner world starts to weaken and the pull of their outer world becomes stronger.


• They begin to focus on how they look. We are now dealing with an image based society where the major form of communication is image. We've moved from a print society to a society that values image and entertainment more than the previous timeless values.


• Girls are sent the message that there is a right way to look. A persons race, money, status, make-up, and perfect bodies are now the goal. Imperfections are not allowed. There is a constant need to fix up, work out and go out to strut your stuff to look better for others and to achieve the ideal figure, hair, makeup and clothes


• This is not real. The images seen in magazine, in the movies, on the TV are not real. They are altered by computers, air brushed and improved to look the way they do. Our girls and women are bombarded with these images. Girls and women begin to lose sight of what they really should look like.


• 80% of women in this country are down on their bodies. Too big here, not big enough there. If only I looked like this, if only I looked like that - then I'd be happy, successful, accepted, rich, desired....


• This brings about the desire for excessive body training and working out, the desire for breast augmentation, lipo-suction, plastic surgery. The message is that if what you have doesn't match the pictures in the magazine, that you need to change what you have and get what they've got.


• the vast majority of 10-12 year old girls are already afraid of being too fat. They're afraid of growing and maturing into an adult body. They stop eating. They're afraid of being undesirable.


• Eating disorders are brought about by cultural disorders


• for thousand of years in Fiji where they had no media advances, they had no eating disorders. Women were large and viewed as beautiful. Now that the media has arrived by way of movies, TV and magazines, Fijian girls are worried about their bodies being too big.


• Our current media spreads the lie that women's bodies can be abused, tied up, tortured, used for the pleasure of men and that it is acceptable as long as the body is beautiful and sexy


• Widespread pornography is one of the results of women giving their beautiful bodies up for the use of men and to be photographed and admired. It also leads to sex trafficking and advertising. Pornography is the blue print of how we are represented as women by most of the men in the world - Sex objects. We encourage this way of thinking by allowing ourselves to be seen as a sexual object to be admired by adorning men by taking violence against women and sexualizing it.


• the media creates an atmosphere that legitimizes violence against women

The film pointed out that "we need to see the part we are playing in creating this image and attempt to minimize it!" We need to ban together as women and change the climate of what is acceptable and what is not. How can we inoculate girls against this culture? Are we going to let the media define who and what we are? They have no right to take women and shove them into tiny frames and dress them up like Barbie dolls. Stop the message that you don't deserve to be treated with respect if you don't fit into the mainstream.

How is this done? They suggested the following:

• get rid of the false images - magazines that present pictures of unrealistic bodies of women. Don't let them in our homes and keep them away from our daughters


• get rid of Barbie dolls - literally!


• have girls make a tree showing women they admire. The girl is the trunk and each women is a leaf on the tree. Help them see how the leaves help make the tree look beautiful, but that it is still beautiful even when the leaves fall off in between seasons. Help her get the message that she can stand alone, but that others will help her.


• limit TV time, especially of programs that show unrealistic bodies of people in the entertainment industry. Stop the pursuit of body envy in the entertainment industry. STOP watching it! Don't give them power over the rest of us. These women have bodies that cannot be achieved without augmentation, surgery, injections, personal trainers and life styles provided by money that most of us don't have.


• Create a support group - a community of strong women of all age groups and find out their stories. Grandmothers, aunts, cousins, neighbors, friends. Teach our daughters to envy and look up to women of accomplishment, rather than women of superficial beauty only.


• Take a good look at yourself. How accepting are you of your body? Learn to develop your our talents and abilities so that you become more than how you look.


• Don't pass body loathing on to you daughters. They will take their cues from you on the way they feel about their bodies.


• Every body has a body what makes sense on it's own terms. Genetics, knowledge of eating patterns and habits. Learn to eat healthy foods and how to best manage your weight based on your height, ancestry and other factors that are beyond your control.


• Encourage activity in outdoor and athletic seeings. Play. Work out together. Visit. Make the goal good health, not good looks.


• Challenge your body but don't over do it. Physical fitness doesn't require hours and hours of work out each day.


• Use your body for something else besides appearance, such as work and play. Gain confidence that your body can perform in areas that have nothing to do with appearance.


• Get real. Get perspective. We as women shouldn't hate each other. Don't compete against each other. Love each other and encourage each other to reach our dreams that have nothing to do with appearance. Most people are just average looking!


• Fashion magazines are too small for my dreams

Heidi's recovery

Some of our friends are going through a severe trial. Their college age daughter Heidi collapsed as she came out of a dance class at BYU - Idaho with a brain aneurysm. She is making good progress in her recovery, but she has a long road ahead. Most people don't survive. They set up this blog so that family and friends can keep up on her progress. It is very faith promoting to see all the good will and help they have been given by the students at BYU -I and the community up there. Our best wishes go to Heidi and her family. They are wonderful people with five beautiful daughers.

32 years of friendship and counting

Sunday night we had dinner at our home with Karen and Carlos. What a wonderful evening! We enjoyed an evening of visiting, catching up and watching the tail end of the Super Bowl. Karen was my mission companion over 32 years ago. She was my trainer in Resistencia, Argentina in 1976 and we had many adventures together. We became fast friends right from the start. Coincidentally, she grew up in neighboring Heyburn, Idaho, so we knew many people in common.



Karen married Carlos after she returned from her mission. Their story is one for the books! Carlos was a convert from Argentina and they meet at the Church Office Building where Karen was working after her mission. They have had a wonderful life together with their son Jason and now have a daughter-in-law and two grand sons.





In 2003 we were fortunate to have some of the people we taught in Argentina come and visit us at our home. It was a very meaningful reunion and we enjoyed reconnecting with these dear friends who now live in Atlanta. We taught their entire family and they were all eventually baptised. The man in the picture was the single branch president serving at the time we were missionaries. He has very happy that we taught his future wife (the one in black) the gospel. Their daughter (named Karen!) is inbetween them in the picture.




About 14 years ago, Rick and I went on a whirl wind vacation with Karen and Carlos (and two of their dear Argentine friends) and returned to our missions in Argentina (me and Karen) and Peru (Rick). We spent more than two weeks touring Chile, Argentina and Peru by plane, cruise ship, bus, and rickety boat. Carlos is a travel agent in SLC and he set us up with the trip of a life time. Here we are seen in Iquitos, Peru deep in the Amazon jungle. Our plane had just landed and it was pouring buckets of rain. We got off the plane on the tarmac and made a run for shelter. As you can see, we got soaked in the process. Since we were in the Amazon jungle, it was hot and humid that we didn't get cold even though we were soaked to the bone.

Here is a picture of us as sister missionaries. This couple in the picture with us is the same couple shown earlier in our living room. This was their wedding day and our mission president gave Karen and me permission to travel back to Resistencia to attend their wedding. It was a marvelous day!

I love Hermana Karen and I'm so privileged to still call her friend after all these years. We had some of the best times together and we grew to love each other, the country and the people we served. I'm so very fortunate to still have her as a friend through these last 32 years and look forward to that continued friendship with her and Carlos for many years to come!

Reading - Part IV

As everyone knows, the benefits of reading to children are HUGE. This interesting article supports that fact:

"Every parent of a young child should resolve to do one simple thing in 2009 that can change his or her life – read to the child every day. Reading to young children is proven to be the single most important thing a parent can do to ensure his child's success in school. Not only does reading improve children's language development — the strongest predictor of school success — it also brings parents and children closer together.
Yet, a study conducted for Reach Out and Read shows that fewer than half of American parents read to their children daily. Young children who are not read to are at the highest risk of reading below grade level once they begin school. More than a third of American children start kindergarten without the basic literacy skills they need to learn to read."

A young child who had been read to is much more likely to want to continue to read on their own. The more books they are exposed to and the greater variety of books they read will help them gain a desire to read on their own. Making the transition from reading daily to a child to getting them to continue to read daily can be a challenge. I think it is wonderful if parents continue to read to their older children as well, either in the car while traveling or in other settings. The trick is to get the child hooked on books so that they will be motivated to continue to read. Children are much more likely to read if they see their parents reading magazines, newspapers or books themselves. Our example speaks volumes to our children in this area as well as many other ways. Reading increases their vocabulary, verbal skills, writing and spelling skills and awareness of what is going on in the world around them.

Good ole Harry Potter has helped in this regard. The series got children into reading who wouldn't have been interested otherwise. But the cool thing is that there are so many other series and other books that are just as interesting and fun to read as Harry. Every library has book lists for each reading level and type of book sought - such as mysteries or adventures for example.

Here are some good sources for other wonderful books:

Here is a list of all the Caldecott award books. The Caldecott Medal is awarded annually by the Association for Library Service to Children, a division of the American Library Association, to the artist of the most distinguished American picture book for children published that year. It was named in honor of nineteenth-century English illustrator Randolph Caldecott. Together with the Newbery Medal, it is the most prestigious American children's book award.

The John Newbery Medal is a literary award given by the Association for Library Service to Children of the American Library Association (ALA) to the author of the Outstanding American Children's Book. The award has been given since 1922. Together with the Caldecott Medal, it is considered the most prestigious award for children's literature in the United States. It is named for John Newbery, an 18th century publisher of juvenile books.

Another great source is one my friend Colleen (who has been an elementary school teacher and administrator for over 20 years) shared at our friends group meeting a few months ago. She gave a great presentation on Children's Literature and share this great site for matching books to readers, using leveled books in guided reading. Also look here for other reading resources that teachers use.

We would make many trips to our public library when our kids were young. They could have their own individual library card as soon as they were old enough to qualify for one - kind of a right of passage. In the hundreds of books we checked out, I think we only lost one. Reading to them when they were young lead to them reading on their own which probably helped lead to academic success as stated in the article at the beginning. Our kids are proof that the theory works! I don't think it can be stressed enough - Reading to Children Matters!!!

Reading - Part III

As technology changes and advances, society is moving from a print-based format to a prominently image-based media. This fact is very disconcerting and sad to me. Fewer people read the newspaper (either the paper copy or online) and fewer people read anything very much at all. Books are gathering dust as technology continues to sweep up available time with video games, text messaging, endless TV and other newfangled techno advances. Not that techno advances are bad, but the loss of simple enriching pleasures such as reading, visiting/talking/discussing, playing parlor games and interacting with one another may impact our culture and way of life more than we realize.
I read this very interesting article entitled Why Literature Matters several months ago that supports this idea. It is written by Dana Gioia who is the chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts. Here is a talk he gave on a similar theme at Stanford 's 2007 commencement. It's such a good talk and message that it really deserves a blog entry all of its own. It's worth every minute it will take you to read it. You might have a paradigm shift about reading after you've read it if you don't think that daily reading and the arts really matter very much. I'll make reference to the part today that has to do with reading. I quote part of the talk:

• A good book changes as you change. The same work can mean something different at each stage of your life.
• Marcus Aurelius believed that the course of wisdom consisted of learning to trade easy pleasures for more complex and challenging ones. I worry about a culture that bit by bit trades off the challenging pleasures of art for the easy comforts of entertainment. And that is exactly what is happening - not just in the media, but in our school and civic life.
  
• Our country is dividing into two distinct behavioral groups. One group spends most of its free time sitting at home as passive consumers of electronic entertainment. Even family communication is breaking down as members increasingly spend their time alone, staring at their individual screens.
• The other group also used and enjoys the new technology, but these individuals balance it with a broader range of activities. They go out - they exercise, play sports, volunteer and do charity work at about three times the level of the first group.
  
• What is the defining difference between passive and active citizens? Curiously, it isn't income, geography or even education. It depends on whether or not they read for pleasure and participate in the arts. These cultural activities seem to awaken a heightened sense of individual awareness and social responsibility.
  
• The habit of daily reading...overwhelmingly correlates with better reading skills and higher academic achievement. On the other had, poor reading skills correlate with lower levels of financial and job success...Whether or not people read, and indeed now much and how often they read, affects their lives in crucial ways.

How can we get our families to read more? How do we lead the charge if we feel that there is real value to the activity?
I think one way would be to share book titles that we enjoy and to share a book review every so often if we've read something we've really enjoyed. Here are some of my favorite series that I shared with others who enjoyed reading them as well:

Lord of the Rings - I read the entire series when I was convalescing with my broken leg when I was 20 years old. I suggested them to Dave when he was a boy and he loved reading them as well.

A bunch of the classics like Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, Pride and Prejudice, A Tale of Two Cities and Moby Dick. Our parents collected these leather bound classics in our home and I read most of these the summer I was staying with Lee and Carol when Mom and Dad, Jan and Dave went to England to get Paul from his mission. Sometimes I would read all night. I would love to read them all again and I highly recommend the Jane Austen series!

Anne of Green Gables series and Anne of Avonlea - young married
Centennial and other James Michener books - college age

The Work and the Glory series - read as a young married

Children of the Promise series - read about 15 years ago with Rick. Enjoyed them very much.
Twilight - OK, I know it's not great literature, but it was entertaining!

You can see my Shelf located on the left side to see what I'm reading now. I like a mix of topics ranging from biographies to religious, fantasy, adventure, history, or just something where I can learn something new.

What are you reading now?