For our second fieldwork, our group met with Dennis Ahlgrim. Dennis was the designer for NYC’s “I’m A Girl” campaign. The “I’m A Girl” add campaign is an add targeted at girls from ages seven through 12 to help with self-esteem issues. The add can easily be seen on the subway or on the side of a bus, and it features a picture of a normal girl, doing something that they like to do (playing chess, sports, reading, etc.) On top of the picture of the girl it says, I’m A Girl, below this it says, I am Beautiful the Way I Am, and under this there are multiple adjectives that describe girls (courageous, smart, unique etc.) Aside from the background about the project, we asked Dennis a couple questions about the campaign itself, how he got involved, and his opinions about our topic, women in the media. One of the questions that I asked, that I was particularly curious about, was how they found the girls that would be in the add. Dennis explained that the models volunteered entirely and there was no payment involved at all. They were mostly the daughters of workers at the office, but others were found at random. With a laugh he said that the girls they started off with were almost “too cute” and that they needed to find more of a verity of girls to shoot. They sought out more ages, sizes, looks and ethnicities to try to include in the ad; they wanted to include every type of girl. Overall, I think we got lots of great valuable information that we will definitely cary with us throughout the rest of our project. Also Dennis was very nice about letting us record him, and he answered the questions we asked him very throughly and meaningfully.

I think that by doing our first interview we are really starting to take off in this project. Many of the other groups have already gone on at least two or three fieldworks, so I was starting to get anxious about contacts and organizations, and doing our first real fieldwork. I found it very difficult contacting my group when the interview was coming up. I found myself doing lots of last minute things that stressed me out, and I think it could have gone a little smoother. I had originally started emailing Dennis from my personal email, to see if he could even do the as his office is in Brooklyn. Once he said yes I started emailing him from my school email, before I could even tell what was happening, we had set up a date for the next day at our school! I quickly emailed my group mates, CCing Sarah and Mommi, confirming that we had an interview the next day.

Otherwise I think that the interview went great, and had been a great jumpstart into our project, and I think that now we have things down and we are starting to move along.