by Mehar Gujral, Angela Batuure, and Crystal Ogar This past weekend, SPARK activists Angela Batuure and Mehar Gujral and SPARK Action Squad Coordinator Crystal Ogar were at the Women in the World Summit in New York City! While Angela and Mehar live blogged from the Women in the World Tumblr, Crystal spoke on a panel…
Have you seen Dove’s latest “Real Beauty” campaign? It’s been making the rounds and causing quite a stir: The video, which shows women describing themselves as ugly and then other people describing them as beautiful, leading up to a big reveal where we all realize that we are our own worst enemy, is drawing both…
By Crystal Ogar Do you find yourself looking at magazine ads of women and seeing something that’s a bit off? What about your favorite TV shows? Or films? How about the lack of women representation to the sexualization of young girls? If you love to blog and create activism in your community, SPARK wants you!…
By Crystal Ogar There are a number of issues when it comes to the casting of The Hunger Games. When we first meet Katniss, the main character in the books, she is described as having straight black hair, usually in a braid down her back, olive skin, and gray eyes. Funnily enough, Gale (her best…
by Crystal Ogar Over the past weekend I was lucky enough to be a part of the third Women in the World Summit (Stories + Solutions) held in New York City at Lincoln Center, and co-hosted by Tina Brown (editor-in chief of Newsweek & The Daily Beast), Lauren Bush Lauren, Leymah Gbowee, Nizan Guanaes, Jane Harman,…
By Crystal Ogar The sexualization of young girls and women begins at a very early age. But what happens when you get older? There’s a suspicious trend that starts to arise as you go from being a young adult to an older woman — the marketing of beauty and anti-aging products exclusively to women. I’m…
The media doesn’t represent us–so we’re making our own media. We’re sick of media that shows women and girls as weak, catty, looks-obsessed, boy-crazy objects of pleasure, so the SPARKteam is joining Miss Representation in demanding media that fairly, fully, and accurately represents women. For every 1000 videos submitted, the folks at the Miss Representation campaign…
By Crystal Ogar Child beauty pageants just may be the most quintessential sexualization of young girls to be found. It has always been hard for me to sit through a full episode of Toddlers & Tiaras, but I decided to finally do it. Beauty pageants have always creeped me out — even after winning a…