Interview with Dennis Ahlgrim, I’m a Girl Campaign,11/12/13

On Tuesday November 12, my group and I met with Dennis Ahlgrim, the
person who designed the I’m a Girl Campaign. The goal of our interview
was to find out more about how the campaign was designed, and how some
important decisions were made. I thought our first interview went
well, especially because we were prepared with what we were going to
ask. Before our interview we spent time making up questions that we
were going to ask and assigning them to people, and this really helped
make sure we were organized and efficient. We asked several questions
and found out about how Dennis designed the campaign. Some interesting
facts were that he found girls ages 7-12 of different ethnicities that
weren’t the typical “beautiful” and shot photos of them looking proud
or confident in a city park. He asked them to bring things they liked
to do, so some brought basketballs or soccer balls or a chess set. He
used every girl that he shot pictures of. It struck me that even girls
as young as seven start to think about their body image. It’s sad to
think that some girls start worrying about how they look when they’re
so young. Dennis became involved with the project by his friend
Samantha Levine, the woman who came up with the idea of the I’m a Girl
Campaign. At first, he even agreed to do the campaign for free. Dennis
got to know the girls as he was working with them, and he had an
interesting story to tell us. One girl’s mom wrote to him and said
that ever since her daughter saw the campaign and posters with her
picture, she felt more confident. Before, she didn’t have much
self-esteem, but participating in this campaign helped her gain
self-assurance.

Us with Dennis Ahlgrim

Us with Dennis Ahlgrim

The next step we want to take is contacting Samantha
Levine. We would like to set up an interview and find out more about
how she came up with the idea of the campaign.