Prof. Meredith Tweed
WST 4021
10 November 2011
Action:
This week was, like last week, fairly quiet regarding our individual project. We collected and posted tweets from the girls at Wednesday’s meeting. Emily also got the pictures from UCF Day developed, but we have not looked through them. We still have only received a few submissions from the girls for the ’zine, so we reminded them about it again on Wednesday. A few of the girls expressed open enthusiasm when we brought it up, which I am hoping means that we will have more submissions from them soon. Until then, we plan to just continue reminding them with fliers and announcements to encourage them to submit work.
Reflection:
Lately, I have been focusing on the lack of response from the girls regarding the ’zine. We intended for the ’zine to be a creative space for the girls to express themselves, and I think in many ways, it could still become that. With the reality of the girls’ seeming disinterest, though, I cannot help but feel that we might have let our ideas about which activities and spaces are empowering overwhelm the actual intended goal of the project. Instead of, as the girls in the AGSL program did with their group research project, allowing the girls to choose how to express themselves and how to define the space they would use for that, we presented the girls with a set idea of what they would be contributing to, not an opportunity to decide what they would create (Muno and Keenan). Even without intention on our part—quite the opposite, actually, given how we provided for areas, like the girls coming up with the ’zine name, that we thought would specifically address girls’ autonomy in creating it—the space of the ’zine has been classified as one we set up for the girls to add to, not one that they made from the start. With time and scheduling constraints of YWLP as a program, I understand that allowing the girls total freedom in developing the type of project they would work on from the beginning is an unrealistic goal. Still, I cannot shake the thought that we might have contradicted ourselves in assuming that a ’zine, not a girl-decided project, would be the best and most empowering project for the girls to complete.
Reciprocity:
Most of this week’s activities have forced me to examine the assumptions I bring to YWLP about the girls we work with. The discussion we had with the girls about body image at Wednesday’s meeting were eye-opening for everyone in terms of how much our girls already knew. I love YWLP, but as with our plan for the ’zine, I think it might benefit the program and us as participants to reevaluate what we assume about what the girls already know, what would be most empowering for them, and what they need from us. Otherwise, we risk supplanting our own ideas of what girls’ agency should look like, rather than providing the girls with genuine opportunity to reclaim that agency for themselves.
Work Cited:
Muno, Ann, and Lynn D. Keenan. “The After-School Girls Leadership Program: Transforming the School Environment for Adolescent Girls.” Social Work in Education 22.2 Apr. (2000): 116-28. CINAHL Plus. Web. 10 Nov. 2011.
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