Femme Revolution-Archives

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We will once again be speaking at a local junior high, possibly more than one. Also, in the spring, we will be speaking at McKendree College in Lebanon Illinois. More news on these events as it comes. If you are interested in having us speak in your town, email us!

Femme Fest 2002 went well, despite the rain, which forced Nicole Mitchell to cancel and led many other people to not attend as well, including our speaker Sylvia Fuentes. Despite those things, many people still attended, and had a very good time. The skies cleared up by the time Rebekah Kohli led everyone in making collages. She spoke briefly about feminism, activism, and bringing them together into collage, and then everyone split up and made their own collages from magazines we provided. Dianne Flint followed Rebekah Kohli. She had everyone make those paper fortune-teller fold-up things that children make, and then used them as a sort of getting-to-know-you activity. In the Real Beauty Pageant, Lois Diperna was crowned queen, followed by Judith Szilak as first runner-up and Rikki Glen as second runner-up. We are already formulating ideas for Femme Fest 2003.

We've added links to webpages with info on eating disorders. Check them out on our links page.

The Underground Publishing Conference, in Bowling Green Ohio, was June 21st-23rd, and we were there. We had a table, where we sold lots of t-shirts (which will be available from our website soon), patches, and buttons. We met many new people with interesting and inspiring projects of their own, many of whom will hopefull be attending Femme Fest. We spoke on a panel talking about women and media. We also went bowling and played spectacularly badly. It was a good weekend. For more info on Clamor Magazine, the group who put UPC on, go to clamormagazine.com.

Nicole Mitchell, a jazz flutist from Chicago who has performed all over the world, will be appearing at Femme Fest! She will perform in an ensemble of other jazz musicians at 2pm. Don't miss it! Read about her at nicolemitchell.com. Dianne Flint, who read poetry at Femme Fest last year, will be back for Femme Fest 2002. She will perform "art poems from the heart" with some of her students (she is head of the English department at a local high school). She captivated the audience last year; this year should be even better! She will start at 2:30pm.

Want to make art? A new Femme Fest announcement: Rebekah Kohli, a graduate student at Northern Illinois University, will be speaking on feminist activist art, and her own experiences with making collages from bad and good images in magazines. Then she will help lead everyone in creating their own collage. The fun starts at 1pm. Remember - the Fest begins at 11am, Ms. Kohli speaks at 1pm, Dr. Fuentes speaks at 3pm, and the Real Beauty Pageant starts at 3:30. Be there!

New Femme Fest annnouncement: Femme Fest 2002 will be held July 27th at Veteran's Acre's Park in Crystal Lake, Illinois. Email us for directions. The fest will start at 11am and run till about 5pm. Dr. Sylvia Fuentes will be speaking on inner beauty at 3pm. She is a professor at Northern Illinois University. It'll be great! Keep checking back as more events are announced!

What musicians do you like? Send us your ideas for songs by female musicians that should be played at Femme Fest '02

On April 16th, some of us had the chance to see Margaret Cho perform at Northern Illinois University, and she was fantastic! We recommend her book I'm the One That I Want and her HBO special. In part of her show she talked about the pressure to be thin in our society, and everything she said was exactly what we thought, except really really funny at the same time. She was very inspiring. Also, during the question and answer session, we gave her one of our flyers for Femme Fest and she read it on stage! It was so exciting! Her website is at margaretcho.com.

The date is set for Femme Fest 2002. Keep July 27th open and keep checking our website for new info on this year's events. The form for nominating someone for the Real Beauty Pageant will be up soon.

We had our second letter-writing party, this time at Northern Illinois University. Everyone wrote fantastic letters. To see examples of some of the letters from our two letter-writing parties, go to What Needs Change.

The letter-writing party went really well. Lots of letters were written, and everyone took a slightly different angle in their letters - and they were all great. We hope to have copies of some of the letters up on our site soon. We are going to have more letter-writing parties in the future, where we can write to other companies that portray women poorly, as well as companies that are doing a good job that we want to encourage.

We're looking for other pro-women sites to add to our links section. These sites could be about anything from women's sports to female musicians- anything that shows women in a realistic and respectful manner. Please email us the addresses of any you know.

Femme Revolution is publishing a website for girls! Body image and the media is a huge issue for adolescent girls today. They are just bombarded with images and messages that say that in order to be happy, successful, or even likable, a girl must be thin, toned, and have fashionable hair, clothes, and makeup. So, we want to counteract those sorts of messages, and help girls feel good about who they are, regardless of how they look. Some ideas we have for the site already are girl written reviews of books, TV shows, and movies that have strong female characters, interesting facts about women in history, a forum for girls to voice their opinions, suggestions for making a difference in their communities, and an extensive links page to other girl positive websites. We have also set up an email account that will be accessible through the site for girls to just have an opportunity to talk to us about any self-esteem or body image problems they're facing. It wil be totally anonymous, and we will of course refer them to a professional for any serios problems. If you have any ideas for the site, or know of a pro-girl website that we should include in our links, please email us.

We're also planning letter writing parties. Letter writing is an effective tool against companies, magazines, and other media that negatively portray women. However, sometimes it's hard to feel like your making a difference when you're on your own, writing one or two letters. So, we thought why not get a bunch of people together, all write letters and make a party out of it? We're shooting for sometime in December for the McHenry area. We will set a date and figure out the details at our next meeting, Friday, November 9th. We will also be hosting one on the Northern Illinois University Campus sometime in November. If you live in the Dekalb area and would like more information, please email us, we'd love to have you there. So, start thinking of companies you would like to write to. If you can't make either of these parties you could always host one of your own, or just let us know which companies you've noticed that are offensive to women, or companies that should be congradulated for their realistic representation of women.

We're happy to say that our junior high presentation went very well. It was scary at first- we're activists not public speakers- but everything went fine. The teachers and principal were very responsive. They asked us to come back later this year to talk to the seventh graders, and next year to speak to all three grades again. The girls were a great audience, if a little shy. Some of the sixth grade girls, however, were very interested in our group. One girl straight out asked how she could join! Many of the girls also signed up to be a part of small discussion groups to talk about the issues we talked about (you can find a link to our notes below) or any of the other pressures they're faced with. We also donated a book to their library called Girl's Guide to Life by Catherine Dee, which is an all around great book for empowering girls. Overall, this was a great success for us and we hope to have the same opportunity at other schools.

Also, thanks to Marsha Wilcox and Just For Fun Again Roller Rink for having us Saturday. It was relaxed and fun, and a few girls even signed up to be on our mailing list. Thanks girls!

Two new events for Femme Revolution! On Friday, October 12th, we will be giving a presentation at a local junior high. We will be talking to the sixth grade and eighth grade girls about the way the media contributes to women feeling bad about their bodies, the way a positive or negative body image can affect other parts of your life, and ways to improve the way you view the media and the way you feel about yourself. If you'd like to read the notes on the speech we're giving, click here.

On Saturday, October 13th, we will be hosting an event for teens and preteens at a roller rink in our area (Northern Illinois). The event, called Femme Skate, is being held just as a fun night for girls and women to relax, have fun, and be happy with themselves, along with some education on body image and how it's affected by the media. We will have posters and flyers set up as we did at Femme Fest, and will probably take five or ten minutes to tell everyone at the rink what our group is about. If you're in the area, stop by, even if you're not a teen.

During the weeks of September 16th and September 23rd, Femme Revolution was on the cable access show The Activist. We, Sandi and Liz (the founders) talked about why we started the group, where we would like it to go, and what people can do to make changes in their own lives. There is also a clip from the Real Beauty Pageant at Femme Fest. If you're interested in obtaining a copy of the show (there are two episodes, a half an hour apiece), email us.

Femme Fest was a success! Lots of women came and supported us. We met lots of new people, and it was great.

We raffled off subscriptions to Big Beautiful Woman, Bust, New Moon, and Ms., along with a Ms. baseball cap and our quilt. The quilt, which was sewn mostly by Helen Holden, a member of our group, was decorated by the women attending the festival. They wrote their ideas about women and beauty in our society. Kay Paulin won it in the raffle.

Performing at Femme Fest were Dianne Flint, reading from "For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf" by Ntozake Shange, Danelle Mooha, singing, and Peggy Caldrone, reading the children's story "The Paper Bag Princess". They were all awesome!

The finalists in the Real Beauty Pageant were: honorable mentions, Kay Paulin, Sue Haddick, Jenny Hunter, Lucy Pagels; third place, Amy Peters; second place (tie), Olga DiLenge and Michelle Bechtel; first place, Jean Schiller. Congratulations all of you!

The Northwest Herald covered the event, as did the cable access show "The Activist." We will let everyone know when the show will air. (unfortunately, only people in the McHenry County area will get it on their TVs.)

Pictures from the event will be put up on Monday.

Femme Fest 2001 was all that we could have hoped for. Our sights are set even higher for next year, Femme Fest 2002!

June 22nd-24th we were at the Underground Publishing Conference in Bowling Green, Ohio. We met lots of new people who are interested in our cause, and we got many signatures on a petition telling companies we won't buy their products until their ads stop showing demeaning images of women. It was a great time, and we will be back next year. Pictures from the event will be up shortly.

On Monday, April 23rd, we set up a table at McHenry County College to pass out information and meet other people who are interested in changing things. It went well - many people took packets of information and several gave us their email addresses. Here are some pictures from the event. Picture 1 Picture 2 Picture 3 Picture 4. One of the women who visited our table wrote us this letter.