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12/27/2007

To help make them aware of the negative influences inherent in such media messages, free workshops are being offered starting next month.

The workshops are sponsored by Hardy Girls Healthy Women, Colby College Museum of Art, Waterville Main Street Program and Freshwater Arts.

"Media Makeover: Changing the Face of Art" will be held at Freshwater Arts and at Colby. The series will culminate in the 10th annual Girls Unlimited! Conference to be held April 5 and hosted by Hardy Girls.

The workshops are intended to help increase girls' awareness of the negative daily messages they get from media and encourage critical thinking skills necessary to identify and combat harmful messages about how girls are supposed to look, act and feel, according to organizers.

Girls taking part in the series then will help teach workshops at the Girls Unlimited! Conference, a day-long event for girls in grades five through eight that offers activities designed to help broaden their horizons, challenge them and introduce them to female artists and other professionals.

"Girls today are bombarded with images and messages from the media that tell girls they need to look, act and be a certain way," said Megan Williams, executive director of Hardy Girls, located on Common Street.

"Meanwhile, girls are rarely given the skills to deconstruct these messages -- or the opportunities to create their own media. The dangerous results of this translate for girls into eating disorders, self-hatred, depression, cutting and feelings of low self-worth and disempowerment. That's the void this project will fill." Alyssa Matthews, 18, is a Girls Unlimited Advisory Board member who has taken part in the annual conference as a volunteer. This year, she is part of the planning committee.

"The conference is great because the girls experience things they wouldn't get to experience in other places," Matthews said. "They may think they can't do something, but this conference gives them a perspective on life and on the opportunities they have as a woman that they might not otherwise experience."

The Girls Unlimited Conference for years was held at Kennebec Valley Community College in Fairfield, but this year it will be held downtown.

Shannon Haines, executive director of the Waterville Main Street Program, said her organization is thrilled to work with Hardy Girls, Colby and Freshwater Arts in hosting the conference.

"Media Makeover will bring more than 120 young women into Freshwater Arts, our downtown arts education center, and provide them with an incredible opportunity to explore the arts and media literacy under the guidance of professional women artists," Haines said.

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