A recent article in the NY Times says that many of Miley Cyrus’ core followers - fans of the Disney Channel show Hannah Montana who tend to be between 8 and 12 years old - think Miley has gone too far with her new, sexy image. In fact, in 2010, only 24% of teens 13-17 said they liked Miley, compared with 45% in 2008.

Miley’s gotten a lot of attention for her new image, which she premiered recently to correspond with her new album, “Can’t Be Tamed.” And at 17 years old, she is definitely pushing the envelope when it comes to what she’s wearing, how she performs, and what she’s singing about. From her pole-dancing move at last year’s Teen Choice Awards to her provocative performance featuring a girl-on-girl kiss on “Britain’s Got Talent,” Miley seems to be stirring up controversy wherever she goes.

That she’s shaking things up and trying to age-up her image as she tries to make the shift from tween sensation to young woman actress, singer, and performer is totally expected. It’s the backlash from her own fans that I find so surprising.

From the NY Times article:

Perry Hamm has adored Hannah Montana since the age of 8. At 9 she bought a ticket to “Hannah Montana: The Movie,” along with one of the 3 million soundtracks sold after the film’s debut. Last September, she scored one of the most coveted tickets among teenagers in 2009: Hannah Montana in concert.

But now, at 11, Perry’s enthusiasm for Ms. Cyrus has fizzled. She wishes Ms. Cyrus would ditch the tight T-shirts and Uggs for the sassy skirts her television persona wears. So last month, when Miley released her post-adolescent anthem, “Can’t Be Tamed,” her once-adoring fan was unimpressed, unmoved by, among other things, the singer’s sexy music video.

“It was weird,” Perry said of Ms. Cyrus’s bird wings and black ribbon corset. “I feel like she acts 25. She looks so old. She is too old for herself.”

While I’m glad for the insight and perspective of girls like Perry who question the young star’s wardrobe and behavior choices in recent months, I hate to think of all the girls who idolize Miley and want to emulate her every step of the way. Miley’s transformation then becomes just one more message in an overflowing pool of wrong messages…messages that tell girls that they should look or dress or be “sexy” to have value and worth.

No, I don’t think Miley, at 17, has a responsibility to all the young girls of the world, and I cannot imagine growing up in the spotlight and having every aspect of my behavior up for debate. But I do have to wonder what Miley’s hoping her sexy image will give her…approval? Acceptance? Love? Respect? If so, she’ll never find what she’s looking for. There’s only one way to achieve that goal, and it’s all about accepting ourselves for who we are, inside and out.

What are your thoughts on Miley’s sexual image?

Ah…If only I was sixteen again. Then I could apply to be an intern for one of my favorite magazines, New Moon Girls. Alas…I’ll have to be satisfied with sharing the opportunity with you!

New Moon Girls is currently accepting applications for talented interns ages 16 and up for Fall 2010 and Winter/Spring 2011. Their interns work with girl and adult editors to foster creative self-expression in girls ages 8+ worldwide. Though the magazine is headquartered in Minneapolis, MN, you can work from the comfort of your own home and still gain real-world experience in many aspects of New Moon’s online community and magazine for girls and their website for parents of girls.

Interns will need to be able to work well independently, communicate well by email and Skype, be Internet-proficient, and have a computer with Word, Excel, Powerpoint, and broadband Internet access. Applications are due by August 1 for Fall and November 1 for Winter/Spring.

Interested? Apply online here!

And if you’re under the age of 16, but still want to get involved, you can sign up to be a New Moon Girls Volunteer, where you’ll have a chance to do things like spread the word online, create New Moon activities for teachers, host online chats, write guest blog posts, and much more.

Are you interested in social activism and creating your own start-up someday to spread the word about your cause? Check out The Social Startup Summit, which I found out about through YouthNoise. Here’s the info from the website:

“Are you a student? Do you spend your weekends volunteering, planning charity dinners, and collecting cans of food for those in need? If you’re the girl who responds to invites to the mall with, ‘Nope, sorry I’ve got a shift volunteering at the hospital then,’ consider joining the Social Startup Summit as a student delegate!

“With a focus on creating socially-responsible ventures, The Social Startup Summit is a one-day, high-impact social entrepreneurship boot camp for high school students. Students come and pitch ideas for community service projects, get in groups of five for the best pitch ideas, and work the whole day to develop a website, online media presence, and do final pitches to judges at the end of the day. The best pitch’s team wins pro-bono consulting, free web and graphic design services, and a grant to jumpstart the project. Unlike other programs, the Social Startup Summit doesn’t not simply lecture on skills needed to maintain a venture, but gives youth the tools to incubate a venture in one day.”

The Summit will be held Monday, August 16th, from 9am to 4:30pm. To find out more about the Summit and getting involved, click here!

Did you tune into ABC Family Monday night to watch the premiere the new buzzed about series, HUGE? If so, you weren’t alone. HUGE reached over 2.5 million viewers, making it one of ABC Family’s biggest series debuts ever. So what does it say about TV audiences when so many people are showing up to watch a show about a group of teens spending the summer at a camp for overweight teens? My hope is that it means viewers are hungry for watching programming with real characters that don’t subscribe to the overhyped and unattainable stereotype of young, thin, and beautiful.

For me, I really enjoyed the first episode. I thought the acting was fantastic (Nikki Blonsky rocked it, as did many of the other teens), the writing was good, and I thought the show did a good job of addressing the issue of weight and body image in a mostly realistic way.

One scene in particular stands out to me, and that’s when one of the campers gets sent home for making herself throw up. While binge eating and bulimia are sometimes addressed on teen dramas, it is usually skinny, popular girls who suffer from these disorders. As Hannah Westberg, author of the upcoming Louder Than Words book, Hannah, wrote in her memoir so eloquently:

When big people lose weight, they get congratulated for being healthy. No one would assume that a fat person losing weight was emotionally unhealthy. No one would consider that eating restrictions were a response to stress like they might if a thin person were to do the same thing. No one would nay-say if they were sick of looking at your fat face.

I appreciate that HUGE drew attention to this unhealthy and risky behavior and pointed out that eating disorders come in all shapes and sizes.

This week many of my friends in the Confidence Community™ have been sharing their own thoughts on the show HUGE, including the fabulous Jess Weiner. Jess even put together a Conversation Guide to help frame discussions and give viewers some things to think about regarding body image, weight, dieting, stereotypes, and the characters on the show. You can find the Conversation Guide here.

So, did you watch the premiere? What are your thoughts?

I recently met an incredible young woman that I want to tell you about. Her name is Emily-Anne Rigal, but you may know her as The Schmiddlebopper, which is the nickname she goes by in the world of online media, in which she is fully entrenched.

I met Emily-Anne at a small gathering of changemakers and people working in the empowerment-building community pulled together by friend, kick-butt Smart Girl, and Actionist (TM) Jess Weiner. At only 16 years old, Emily was the only teen in the group. I knew something must be very special about this young woman to have had such an impact on Jess, who is my personal role model when it comes to the way I want to live my passion and be fully committed to creating positive change for women and girls everywhere.

Now that I’ve gotten to know Emily and find out what she’s all about, I’ve got another role model to look up to. A queen of social media (you’ll find her on Twitter, Tumblr, and Facebook), Emily-Anne is probably best known for her YouTube Channel where she posts video blogs about whatever’s on her mind. What I love best about her videos is that they’re unapologetically Emily-Anne - they’re smart, quirky, honest, and most importantly, REAL. As Emily says in her introductory video (you can watch it here), “I go out of my way to be different. You know, the more I think about it, I’m not weird…I’m just limited edition.”

For me, that line really resonates. If only all girls and women could have that same sense of confidence in who they are to know that their uniqueness is worthy of being embraced and celebrated. So, thank you Emily-Anne for putting your thoughts, perspectives, ideas, opinions, and bloopers out there for all the world to see. By being who you are so beautifully, you give girls everywhere inspiration to celebrate their own individuality!

Check out Emily-Anne’s latest video on YouTube featuring her thoughts on the upcoming ABC Family show, HUGE, which features Nicky Blonsky spending the summer at a weight loss camp for overweight teens. (I’ll be posting more on that show next week after the premiere Monday night.)

I’m wearing jeans today. How about you? If you’re wearing a skirt or perhaps a sun dress, you might want to think about changing. Why? Because New Moon Girls has declared today “Wear the Pants Day” to draw attention to the fact that millions of girls and women around the world are still forbidden or discouraged from wearing pants.

According to New Moon, girls and women are beaten, arrested, and worse for wearing pants. In fact, last fall schoolgirls in the Sudan were flogged for wearing pants and 20 women in Uganda were stripped of their pants and forced to walk home in underwear.

But the issue of women / girls and pants hits closer to home. Only 2 years ago, the Wall Street Journal reported on a “persistent bias against pants-wearing women in careers such as law and finance.” Female college grads are warned to wear skirts if they have hopes of hitting the top posts in their professions. And women in the senate and congress only started wearing pants in the 1990s!

Why today, you ask? Here’s what New Moon has to say:

“New Moon Girls picked this day because on June 11, 1964, the Equal Pay Act was enacted in the U.S., mandating that women receive equal pay for equal work. Now, some 46 years later, pants barriers have largely toppled in the US; however, American women still earn just 77 cents to a man’s dollar. Wearing pants today helps keep us focused on the work that remains ahead to ensure that our daughters enter a workplace that’s finally fair.”

So, wear your pants (or shorts if it’s really hot where you live) today and stand up for women everywhere!

I don’t typically write these kinds of posts, but an important voice for young girls - New Moon Magazine - is in jeopardy, and Smart Girls Know wants to help keep it alive. Aimed at girls ages 8-13, New Moon fills a void in the marketplace of media for girls by offering something unique and positive, something that empowers its readers in an authentic way.

There is so much I LOVE about the magazine. Here are just a few of my favorite things about New Moon:

• It is truly created by girls for girls - the magazine and site has an all-girl editorial board made up of girls ages 8-12 that drives the great content you’ll find inside and edits the magazine
• New Moon is 100% advertising free, so that means there’s no need to deal with the kinds of media images you’ll find in traditional girl and teen magazines that research shows makes girls feel insecure and less confident about themselves
• New Moon offers opportunities for interested girls to get published in each issue

All of these things are great, but what would a magazine be without fantastic content? New Moon has that in spades, too. New Moon is all about helping girls discover and honor their true selves, engage in meaningful pursuits and dialogue, and express their voices in ways that matter.

Because this magazine is ad-free, it counts on the support of funders and subscribers to keep it afloat. Right now New Moon is in a particularly difficult financial crunch, and its future is at stake.

To do our part, Smart Girls Know has become an affiliate of New Moon. As an affiliate, Smart Girls Know is offering a $10 discount off the price of a year subscription, which includes 12-month unlimited online access to New Moon’s informative site. Typically affiliates earn a commission on sales, but Smart Girls Know is forgoing its commission to support the future of the magazine. To take advantage of this special offer, click here.

If you feel so moved, please help Smart Girls Know make sure this distinct voice and outlet for girls doesn’t go away!

XOXO Debbie

When I was a teen, there wasn’t much, if any, alcohol in the house. The drinking of alcohol was reserved for Christmas or Thanksgiving, when my mom would break out a bottle of syrupy sweet blush wine. Occasionally, my parents would let my sister and I have a sip, but that was about it. My parents were fairly strict, and would never have knowingly allowed my friends and I to partake in any alcohol at the house.

Though I suspect they knew I drank every now and then, I also knew it was completely against their rules. As a result, most of my teen drinking occurred at the house of friends, where we’d either dip into a parent’s liquor cabinet, or a friend with an older friend would get us a couple of six-packs. Drinking was something that happened on some weekends in high school, usually at bigger parties, and only occasionally to excess.

So I was interested to hear a story on the radio the other day about teens drinking habits being impacted by their parents’ attitudes towards drinking. According to the story on NPR:

Alcohol researcher Caitlin Abar from Pennsylvania State University found that parents’ efforts do play a role in shaping their teens’ behavior. She studied how parents deal with their high school teenagers regarding alcohol use while still at home, and she then checked after the teens’ first semester of college. Her study of 300 teenagers and their parents was published recently in the journal Addictive Behaviors.

“Parents who disapproved completely of underage alcohol use tended to have students who engaged in less drinking, less binge drinking, once in college,” Abar says.

And conversely, a parent’s permissiveness about teenage drinking is a significant risk factor for later binge drinking.

“The parents who are more accepting of teen drinking in high school were more likely to have children who engaged in risky drinking behaviors in college, compared to those children who had parents that were less accepting,” Abar says. The researchers also asked the teens about their parents’ drinking patterns and found that parents’ own drinking behavior influenced a teen’s later alcohol use.

This more permissive attitude some parents embrace today in which they allow their teens and possibly their teens’ friends drink as long as it’s at home and they’re being “safe” is referred to as the European model, since many countries in Europe are more lax about drinking age limits and families often allow their children to socially drink with the idea that they’ll learn to drink responsibly.

But new research shows this isn’t actually the case. “The more teenagers drink at home, the more they will drink at other places, and the higher the risk for problematic alcohol use three years later,” says researcher Haske van der Vorst.

What do you think of the findings of this research? To be honest, when I went to Penn State as a freshman, I definitely took partying to the extreme on more than one occasion. And in some ways, I think that my strict upbringing regarding drinking made the easy access to alcohol in college to tempting to say no to.

What is the attitude towards alcohol in your family? Is it completely forbidden? Do you think that by making it accessible to teens, it becomes less of a big deal?

I was thrilled to hear the news last week that for the first time in the history of West Point, the top two honors in the graduating class went to women! Elizabeth Betterbed and Alexandra Rosenberg were named the overall cadet and class valedictorian of the prestigious U.S. Military Academy, respectively.

President Obama was on-hand to congratulate the women as he gave the graduation address last Saturday:

“This underscores a fact that I’ve seen in the faces of our troops from Baghdad to Bagram - in the 21st century, our women in uniform play an indispensable role in our national defense. And time and again, they have proven themselves to be role models for our daughters and our sons - as students and as soldiers and as leaders in the United States armed forces.”

Though the Academy was first open to students in 1802, women were only admitted for the first time in 1976, when 119 females started as freshman. Today, women make up about 15% of cadets starting the four-year program.

Congratulations to Elizabeth and Alexandra on their incredible achievement!

* * * * *

Are you interested in learning more about a career in the military? Check out my interview with Coast Guard Lt. Leanne Lusk in my book In Their Shoes. Leanne talks about what she loves about the job, describes her personal career journey, and walks readers through a “typical” day in her world (there’s actually nothing typical about it).

When I interviewed Leanne for the book, I asked her what it was like being a woman in the military since so many perceive it as a male-dominated career path. Here’s what she had to say:

“Out of all the armed services, the Coast Guard has the highest percentage of women. And I love busting stereotypes about what women can and can’t do. I’m not someone that people would look at and think I’m a federal law enforcement officer…I really like breaking out of that mold. I know that I can get dropped in a country anywhere in the world and survive…I know how to take care of myself.”

Smart Girls Know would like to join Girls Inc. in celebrating Girls’ Rights Week! From May 3 – May 7, Girls Inc. is focused on girls promoting positive spaces for physical activity as part of their and their communities’ greater health and wellbeing.

As part of the week, the Girls Inc. National Scholars traveled to Washington, D.C. where they met with Susan Sher, First Lady Michelle Obama’s Chief of Staff, and Jocelyn Frye, Director of Policy and Projects in the Office of the First Lady, to present finding of Girls Inc. Healthy Girls, Healthy Communities, a project in which girls across the country examined the resources available in their communities to encourage physical activity and barriers that prevent girls from using these resources.

This week is also meant to bring awareness to Girls Bill of Rights - six statements that help girls envision a healthy, successful future and an equitable society. So without further ado, here they are:

• Girls have the right to be themselves and to resist gender stereotypes
• Girls have the right to express themselves with originality and enthusiasm
• Girls have the right to take risks, to strive freely, and to take pride in success
• Girls have the right to accept and appreciate their bodies
• Girls have the right to have confidence in themselves and be safe in the world
• Girls have the right to prepare for interesting work and economic independence

For more info on Girls’ Rights Week, visit the Girls Inc. website here!