On December 10, my social justice group and I went to meet with Samantha Levine who works for city hall. Samantha was the second person we interviewed about the I’m a Girl Campaign, the first being Dennis Algrim, the designer, but she is the manager, so it was great to see where the idea came from. Samantha said that even before she was inspired to do the campaign, she was always conscious about the fact that girls self esteem is faltering. She was inspired to make a campaign targeted towards young people because she was well aware of the countless young girls, at the ages of eight-fourteen that were struggling with their body images. Her first steps in beginning the project were contacting people that supported girls, and knew a lot about how the media, and other things affect girls self esteem, much like the fieldworks we are going out and doing now. One of the groups Samantha contacted was the Lower East Side Girls Club. An organization that I have actually taken a few workshops from, The Girls Club offers classes and activities that empower girls and women in all paths of life. She said she talked to a lot of the girls in the program, and they helped guide her inspiration greatly.

We also talked with Samantha about her opinions on women in the media. She believes that the media shows women with little to no diversity. She also believes the media is brainwashing people with all the photoshop and edits they use to make people become the ideal perfection. She states the media forces the idea that all women have to strive for the perfection to get anywhere in life on not only women, but young girls who in this day and age are exposed to tons of media each day. Samantha said that she is not affected by the media now, but when she was younger, the media affected how she thought of herself, the same thing that is happening to many girls today. Girls don’t feel they are good enough because they think they need to be as pretty as a photoshopped woman, and even just that thought makes you realize how twisted the media can be. Samantha also said one other thing, which is that as people who submit ourselves to the media, we can tend to believe what the media has created for us, a typical standard of beauty. However, there are no standards, and specific qualifications when it comes to beauty, it’s much, much more about how you feel inside.

Here is a link to the I’m a Girl Campaign website: http://www.nyc.gov/html/girls/html/home/home.shtml