While a woman for the first time has come within reach of a major-party nomination for the presidency, it's still not easy being a girl in American culture.

One academic study has shown that by age 13, 53 percent of American girls are "unhappy with their bodies." By age 17, that number jumps to 78 percent of girls who are dissatisfied with their bodies.

According to the federal government, more than 90 percent of those with eating disorders are women, and anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa and binge-eating disorder are all on the rise in the United States.

A study by the American Psychological Association found that "the proliferation of sexualized images of girls and young women in advertising, merchandising, and media is harmful to girls' self-image and healthy development."

And anyone with even a mid-1990's sense of propriety would be scandalized by watching music videos featuring barely dressed women or by going to the mall and looking at the girls' clothes on display -- much of which is overtly sexually suggestive.

Hard to imagine, but we're still stuck in a culture that demeans and disempowers females, despite the fact that many women have risen to high-level and responsible positions in the work and political worlds. That culture can hurt girls; the rates of cutting and dangerous dieting-to-the-edge-of-starvation, for example, have been rising steadily over the years.

Enter Waterville's Karen Heck.

Heck has been a national leader in efforts to advance women's rights by making culture safer and more supportive for girls. Waterville City Manager Michael Roy echoes Heck's many admirers when he describes her as "a very courageous and principled person."

That courage and principle will be appropriately rewarded next month when Heck is inducted into the Maine Women's Hall of Fame.

Heck has worked on many issues and with many groups, including the Waterville Area Boys and Girls Club and that city's rape crisis assistance program. Prominent among Heck's many accomplishments is the Waterville nonprofit group Hardy Girls/Healthy Women, which she founded along with Colby College professor Lyn Mikel Brown and Lynn Cole. The group aims to promote healthy development in girls by giving them the tools to change the unsupportive, biased or degrading contexts in which they spend their daily lives.

Don't like the harassment you're seeing in your school? Hardy Girls will supply you and your teachers and classmates with an "Ugly Duckling Community Action Kit," which offers tools to end bias-based harassment and promote tolerance.

Want to meet other girls in grades 5-8 who are interested in breaking out of the stereotypes our culture pins on them? Go to the annual Girls Unlimited Conference put on by Hardy Girls -- or just check out the organization's Web site, which now gets 100,000 hits a month.

Hardy Girls operates on the assumption that "girls' and women's positions will not improve until ... social and political landscapes are improved."

By working with community members, the group directly challenges the idea that when a girl is troubled, it's her problem. While that may sometimes be the case, what Heck and her colleagues are saying is that it's a troubled society that produces girls who hate their bodies and hurt themselves and others.

Looking around us, it's hard to argue with that notion. We are grateful to Karen Heck and her colleagues who are trying to make the world a better, more supportive place for girls. It's a huge task.