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 , , and ), Emily-Anne is probably best known for her 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 ), “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?