By Melissa Campbell In the ongoing conversation around SPARK’s Seventeen Magazine campaign, I’ve been hearing over and over again my absolute least favorite piece of advice for young people (or any people) who are trying to make a difference in the world: “Vote with your dollars!” I’m not kidding that this is my least favorite [...]
by Melissa Campbell WOW—more than 48 thousand people have signed on to our petition asking LEGO to rethink the way they market their toys! This is totally amazing and we’re so proud to be launching this incredibly important conversation around gender, development, and play. If you’re tuning into this action-in-process, check out these pieces detailing what our [...]
Check out our amazing executive director Dana Edell talking about the sexualization of girls on 20/20 in this clip from Friday, November 25th: We were so excited about her being on the show that we held a livechat at the same time! We hung out with the SPARKteam, our leadership team, and our allies Jaclyn Friedman, Shelby [...]
The sexualization of girls in our culture is kind of like a hydra: you get rid of one awful image, product, or advertisement, and six new ones appear in its place. Sometimes it can feel like nothing you do makes a difference—media makers have so much money and power, and maybe you just have an [...]
By Melissa Campbell After the first SPARK Summit in October 2010, I wrote that I had never felt camaraderie and companionship like I had at the Summit. I talked about how great it felt to be part of a growing movement, to know that I was not alone, and to see change—to be change. “Make [...]
Represent US with Miss Representation
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 [...]