There are three things you need to know about  Emily-Anne Rigal, a.k.a. The Schmiddlebopper. 1) She is one of the kindest, motivated, inspirational, forward-thinking young gals I know, 2) she wears bows in her hair every day, and 3) she is the founder of the nonprofit WeStopHate which is reaching thousands of teens with its message of “teen esteem.”

About the bow-in-the-hair thing, it’s true! And that’s me modeling a bow Emily-Anne sent me. (I’m rocking the look, right?)

And about WeStopHate, this is something you should definitely know about. Here’s how the movement is described on the :

WeStopHate is a charitable nonprofit program created to raise teen-esteem through the power of online videos and social media. We define “teen-esteem” as giving teenagers the confidence to stand up for themselves while also accepting who they are and not being afraid to show it! Our videos feature teens and WeStopHate experts sharing their personal experiences about overcoming insecurities and providing their confidence tips with the WeStopHate community.

To support the work of WeStopHate, visit their website ,view the videos and spread the word among your friends, or buy one of the cool wristbands I’m wearing in the picture, which says Be You (tiful) – WeStopHate.org or a T-shirt with the same message. To stay in the loop on what’s going on with WeStopHate, “like” their here!

Here’s a sampling of a video from WeStopHate!

Think about the television shows you watch the most. Are there any teen girls and young women in them? Now answer these questions:

• Are the teen characters shows ever shown in sexual situations?
• When teen characters are in sexual situations, do they seem to be positive ones or negative ones?
• Do the sexual situations happen in “unhealthy” situations (such as when a character is drunk, depressed, taken advantage of, feeling pressured)?
• Do the sexual situations happen within committed relationships?
• Are the sexualized incidents depicted as the punchline to a joke or in a humorous way at the girls’ expense?

These are the factors that the Parents Television Council looked at when conducting their study, “Tinseltown’s New Target: A Study of Teen Female Sexualization on Primetime TV,” which was just released last week. The study found that when underage female characters appear on screen: more sexual content is depicted; the teen girls show next to no negative response to being sexualized; more sexual incidents occur outside of any form of a committed relationship; and there is less accuracy in the TV content rating.

The PTC president Tim Winter says, “Storylines on the most popular shows among teens are sending the message to our daughters that being sexualized isn’t just acceptable, it should be sought after.”

The shows reviewed in the study focused on 14 different shows that are among the most popular for teens: The Office, NCIS, Two and a Half-Men, The Big Bang Theory, The Vampire Diaries, Grey’s Anatomy, Desperate Housewives, Lost, Family Guy, House, Glee, The Cleveland Show, American Dad, and The Simpsons.

How about the programs you watch? Do you think what you see is the best TV programmers can do? And if there is content you see that portrays teen girls and their sexuality in an unhealthy light, why do you put up with it? After all…if there were no audiences for these shows, the ratings would plummet and the networks would pull the plug. But when we watch, and say nothing, we’re perpetuating the idea that not only is what we’re seeing okay…it’s what we want.

Of course, there are shows that come along every now and then with strong female lead characters who break the mold and promote a strong sense of self (Freaks and Geeks, HUGE, etc.), but they’re few and far between. Much more prevalent are shows like Gossip Girl, which is about as risque as TV aimed at you can get. When shows like this become superpopular, programmers get the idea that those are the kinds of shows we need more of. And the cycle continues.

While programs that depict teen sexuality in unhealthy ways probably aren’t going anywhere, we as media consumers CAN have an impact on what shows stay on the air. We can write letters to the TV networks, rally the troops online, create a Facebook page for the cause, boycott shows that are failing girls.

But we need to be more than just vocal consumers…we need to be critical consumers of media. To know that the characters and storylines we’re sucked into don’t in any way, shape, or form, resemble REALITY, and that the shows we watch were created with the sole intention of SELLING us as an audience to advertisers.

So, what are your thoughts on how girls are portrayed on the shows that you watch?

Interested in learning more about the study? Your can read the PTC’s full report here.

While there are lots of great things about the holidays, among them, time off of school or work, a seemingly endless supply of iced sugar cookies, and the giving and receiving of gifts, this time of year also tends to be among the most stressful. It sometimes seems almost as if time starts moving faster, like we’re all caught up in some sort of bizarre holiday season time warp.

For me, the key to getting through the holidays without a major meltdown boils down to two words: time management. Time management is all about organizing your schedule, making the best use of your limited time, and creating a realistic plan for accomplishing everything on your “to do” list. Time management can mean creating a plan for accomplishing specific tasks each day or week or month, being honest with yourself about what you can and can’t actually accomplish, rearranging your schedule to fit it all in, and even knowing when you need to take something off your plate and following through. Plainly put, time management is figuring out the tasks at hand and coming up with a plan for executing them.

So, how does this help reduce stress?

Well, stress often comes from fear of the unknown or being overwhelmed about everything that’s going on. Time management takes the mystery out of the equation. Plan of action = peace of mind.

Here’s how to get real about getting it all done:

1. Create a detailed, and complete, list of everything you want to get done.
2. Figure out how long each task will take you (your best guesstimate is fine, but be as realistic as possible)
3. Come up with “deadlines” for each thing you want to accomplish
4. Backtrack from the deadline and create mini-goals for completing each task
5. Add tasks to your daily “to do” list so you can work toward your bigger items each day

If you’re working on bigger tasks or projects that have many steps, you might want to create a separate list for each project. For example, if you’re planning a big holiday bash, you’ll probably want to fill out a template just for that, noting each step involved (picking a date, making a guest list, sending out Evite, getting/making decorations, going shopping for food, picking an outfit, etc.) and their related deadlines.

A few last thoughts on integrating time management strategies into your life so they reduce your stress:

• Keep your “to do” lists in a visible place where you can easily see them
• When you figure out your deadlines, put them in your calendar or in your phone (with an alarm)
• Set aside time each day to check things off of your list (choose a time/place with minimal distractions so you’ll be more productive and efficient)
• Create a mini “to do” list each morning of specific things from your bigger list you want to accomplish that day
• Don’t forget to schedule hangout time with your friends or alone time with yourself to recharge!

How do you get it all done over the holidays? What time management strategies work for you?

* * * * *

For more strategies on beating stress, check out my book Chill: Stress-Reducing Techniques for a More Balanced, Peaceful You!

Are you a poet between the ages of 12 and 18 looking to get published? VOYA Magazine, the magazine for Voice of Youth Advocates which is devoted to the informational needs of teenagers, is looking for submissions for its annual poetry contest!

To enter, you must connect with a librarian, teacher, or other professional who works with youth and have them submit your entry on your behalf – the contest WILL NOT accept entries submitted by teens. VOYA judges will select the top five poems. When notified, sponsors must return the Publication Authorization form which gives parental permission to print the work of the winning poets. Each winner will receive a $20 cash prize and a copy of the April 2011 issue of VOYA.

Interested? Here are the submission guidelines:

1. Your poem may be up to 30 lines on any topic
2. It must be typed in a word document
3. Include your name, age, town, and state; adult sponsor’s name, title, organization/school/library, address, phone and email on the SAME PAGE as your poem
4. Name the document file with your last name (ie: Smith.doc)
5. Attach the document to an email with “VOYA Teen Poetry Contest” and your last name in the subject line and send to
6. Please submit only ONE poem for consideration

The deadline for entries is December 31, 2010. Good luck!

It’s gift-giving season, and I often get asked by parents of girls and young women if I have any recommendations for magazines or books that have a positive, empowering message. So I thought I’d do a little Smart Girls Know holiday round-up to draw attention to some of my favorite media for girls. (Let me know if I’ve missed anything by adding yours in the comments!) Here goes:

Ages 13-18

• Teen Voices: A magazine that supports and educates teen girls to amplify their voices and create social change through media. Teen Voices is the only alternative print magazine created by and for teen girls in the country.
• Kiki Magazine: Kiki isn’t about gossip, dating, instructions on how to kiss, or tips on getting sexy abs. Instead, the mag uses the college fashion design curriculum as a starting point to encourage girls to explore other disciplines (business, geography, fine art, craft, history, world culture, even math). The magazine is designed to be interactive so that each reader can transform every issue into her own creativity journal.
• Teen Ink Magazine: A national teen magazine, book series, and website devoted entirely to teenage writing, art, photos and forums. The magazine offers some of the most thoughtful and creative work generated by teens and has the largest distribution of any publication of its kind.
• Louder Than Words series: This first-ever series of teen authored memoirs presents true, powerful stories written by current teens through unique prose, journal entries, and poetry. (Edited by Deborah Reber)
• by Deborah Reber: Strategies to help teens find balance and stress-relief despite their overbooked, overwhelming lives, including tips on time management, support systems, self-help therapy, exercise, nutrition, and much more.
• by Deborah Reber: Teens can discover what they really want to know about career choices through 50 inspiring “Day in the life” profiles, along with a ton of sidebars, lists, helpful tips, and words of wisdom from women in the workforce. Women profiled include Grey’s Anatomy creator Shonda Rhimes, Senator Barbara Boxer, CosmoGirl editor-in-chief Susan Schulz, and NPR radio host Melissa Block.
• by Becca Werthheim: 18-year-old author Becca Wertheim realizes that being a teen isn’t always easy, but that’s one of the reasons why it’s so important to make the most of the teenage years, and enjoy each and every day. She helps readers discover how to live a life full of confidence, success, and happiness. With an entertaining and heartfelt teenage perspective, Becca offers motivation, empowerment, and inspiration to teens.
• by Claire Mysko: Published in collaboration with Girls’ Inc, this book offers advice on not-so-easy topics, including how to deal with stereotypes and cliques, figure out the best way to balance school and a social life, navigate the crushes and dating world, and find a place in your family.
• by Courtney Macavinta and Andrea Vander Pluym: This smart book helps teen girls get respect and hold on to it no matter what, covering topics like body image, family, friends, the media, school, relationships, and rumors, sexual harassment, date rape, sex, drugs, and alcohol.
• by Heather M. Gray and Samantha Phillips: This straight-talking guide—a veritable Our Bodies, Ourselves for teens—helps girls make up their own minds about what kind of people they want to be while exploring beauty and the media; body image, ethnicity and self-esteem; eating disorders and healthy nutrition; sexual anatomy, safe sex and more.
• by Carrie Silver-Stock: Our secrets help us, hurt us, and sometimes even haunt us beyond high school. By revealing the personal stories, struggles, and secrets of other teen girls, Carrie Silver-Stock shows how to deal with everyday stresses by being self-reliant, not silent, and how to get real about what matters.

Ages 8-13

• New Moon Magazine: An inspiring and empowering 100% ad-free magazine created by girls for girls, featuring an all-girl editorial board made up of girls ages 8-12 that drives the content you’ll find inside and edits the magazine. NOTE: Smart Girls Know has partnered with New Moon to offer you a $10 discount off the regular subscription price. Click here to take advantage of this offer!
• by Deborah Reber: Each of these books (School, Challenges, and Friends) deal with the challenges today’s teens face, and feature 50 true stories written by teens, plus weird facts, cool graphics, fun advice, and quizzes.
• by editors of American Girl: Provides commonsense solutions to 40 scenarios, quick-fix ideas, and preventive measures to avoid the situation next time.
• by Valorie Schaefer: This bestselling guide answers all the questions growing girls have about their bodies – from hair care to healthy eating, bad breath to bra buying, pimples to periods. It offers guidance about basic hygiene and health without addressing issues of sexuality.

All Ages

• Pigtail Pals: Pigtail Pals offers empowering apparel and products for girls to “redefine girls” and show the world just how smart, daring, and adventurous girls can be. NOTE: These awesome products are made by Smart Girls Know friend Melissa Wardy, and she’s offering a 15% off special for shoppers who act fast. To get the discount, enter the code ptp15 at checkout!

Just yesterday I received a padded envelope from Simon & Schuster, and inside were two copies of my new book, ! Though it doesn’t officially come out until December 21, my lovely editor popped a few copies in the mail to me so I could feel them with my hot little hands.

I’m most excited about this book since it’s my first foray into fiction writing, although admittedly that has me a little nervous to find out if readers like the characters and story I came up with. It’s a whole different ballgame than writing nonfiction books, which are usually heavily researched and the structure is a little more straightforward.

Language of Love was originally to be part of Simon Pulse’s Romantic Comedies line, but Pulse recently rebranded that series and began packaging them in collections – two books in one. So now Language of Love is part of Love, Love, Love, which also features Caroline Goode’s book, Cupidity. As the back of my book says, Love, Love, Love presents “Two sweet stories about finding your own true love.”

Here’s a little blurb about my book:

Janna is quickly adapting to life in Seattle as a high school exchange student from Hungary. Or at least Julian, the cute boy she met in a coffee shop, thinks she is. The truth is, he overheard Janna using a phony accent, and now she’s stuck playing the part . . . Will Julian want to be with the real Janna? Or will she discover that lies don’t always translate to love?

I’ll be posting more about Language of Love as the official release date nears, but am happy to share that today the lovely and talented Holly Cupala (author of the fantastic novel Tell Me A Secret) is hosting me over at her blog, where she’s featuring an interview with yours truly (she even got me to spill some secrets) and a giveaway. Thanks Holly!

Today is Rally for Girls Sports Day, an annual event hosted by the National Women’s Law Center (NWLC) to raise address the fact that girls are still not receiving equal opportunities in high school sports programs. According to the NWLC, schools across the country don’t provide equal opportunities for girls to participate in sports, and some are even cutting athletic opportunities in ways that exacerbate existing gender inequities or create new ones.

And there is a ton of research documenting the many benefits of sports in the lives of girls. As outlined by the Women’s Sports Foundation, girls who participate in sports are more likely to get better grades and graduate than girls who don’t play sports, are less likely to have an unwanted pregnancy in school than girls who don’t play sports, have higher levels of confidence and self-esteem and lower levels of depression than girls who don’t play sports, have a more positive body image than girls who don’t play sports, may reduce their risk of breast cancer by up to 50%, may reduce the risk of osteoporosis (brittle bones) in older age, and will learn valuable lessons about team-building, goal-setting and the pursuit of excellence, which crosses over into other areas of life.

When schools don’t offer the same opportunities for girls to participate in sports as they do for boys, they’re creating an unequal playing field for the future (pun intended). As the NWLC’s brief reports:

Playing sports keeps students engaged in school and thus can help to improve graduation rates around the country. Young women who play sports are more likely to graduate from high school, have higher grades, and score higher on standardized tests than non-athletes. Female athletes are also more likely to do well in science classes than their classmates who do not play sports.20 In addition, the availability of athletic scholarships dramatically increases a young woman’s ability to pursue a college education and to choose from a wider range of colleges and universities.

To do my part for today’s Rally for Girls Sports Day, I wanted to highlight an organization that is working hard to ensure girls can reap the benefits of sports.This past weekend I had the pleasure of being a running buddy with Girls on the Run, a learning program for girls ages 8 to 13 years old which combines training for a 3.1 mile running event with self-esteem enhancing, uplifting workouts. The goals of the programs are to encourage positive emotional, social, mental, spiritual and physical development. This fall, more than 350 girls in my hometown of Seattle had a chance to participate.

I’ve been involved with Girls On The Run for the past 5 or so years, coaching girls for a few seasons and being a running buddy for the past three. As a running buddy, I get paired with one girl for both the practice and actual 5K, so she feels supported throughout the whole thing. And me, well, I just get to enjoy the warm and fuzzies from sharing in this experience with a young girl who is pushing herself outside her comfort zone.

And this past Sunday was no exception, especially about the comfort zone part, as it was in the low thirties with the added bonus of what felt like an Arctic “breeze” coming off Lake Washington to make sure we were near frozen before the race even started. Despite the less-than-ideal conditions, my runner, Sophie, kept a positive attitude the whole time. She and her friend decided they wanted to try and be the first Girls on the Run girls to cross the finish line, so we all weaseled our way up to the start line and took off like mad when the starting horn finally went off.

After I caught up with her starting-line sprint, we tackled a killer hill in the first mile, and enjoyed long easy strides as we coasted down it. With the hill out of the way, the rest of the course was pretty flat, so we focused on recovering from the hill, managing our breathing, and finding a pace that we could keep steady. Sophie stayed strong, and with about a half-mile to go, we decided to kick it in, sprinting for the finish line. Sophie came in 4th out of all the girls, and her friend from the start of the race came in 1st! I was so proud of my runner, and so honored to have gotten to share this experience with her!

As a runner and a girl advocate, it’s no surprise that I love what Girls on the Run stands for. I’ve said it many times before on this blog, and I’ll say it again. Running is a HUGE part of my emotional well-being. It has given back to me in more ways than I can possibly list here, and I think it is an incredibly empowering activity for women and girls. So how awesome is it that GOTR introduces girls to running, all the while offering empowering information on everything from media literacy to self-respect and providing girls with true role models to show the benefits of running? Pretty awesome.

Girls on the Run is offered in the fall and spring all across the U.S. If you’re interested in learning more about the program or how to get involved, visit the main website here and look for a chapter near you! And if you’re interested in trying out running for yourself but don’t know where to start, check out my book Run for Your Life: A Book for Beginning Runners!

Are you a high school junior or senior looking for summer growth opportunities? You might want to look into these programs I just learned about courtesy of the Northwest Girls Coalition.

The first is the Student Leaders Program through the Bank of America’s Charitable Foundation, which is open to high school juniors and seniors who have a passion for improving their community. The program aims to “put passion into action” by providing selected students with an 8-week paid internship at a nonprofit organization, as well as an all-expenses paid week-long Student Leadership Summit in Washington, DC where they’ll gain civic, social, and business leadership skills. Interested? Fill out the online application here (deadline is January 12, 2011).

The second opportunity is the Bezos Scholars Program at the Aspen Institute, which will award twelve pairs of top public high school juniors and educators a seven-day, all-expenses-paid scholarships to attend the Aspen Ideas Festival next summer. To be eligible for the program, the student and educator team must be independent thinkers, demonstrated leaders, and engaged community member, and come from a public high school (including charter and magnet schools) at which at least 25 percent of students are eligible for the free/reduced lunch program. The school must offer Advanced Placement, International Baccalaureate, or the opportunity to take college/community college courses.

To qualify, student applicants must be public high school juniors during the 2010-11 academic year who: demonstrate leadership in school and community, have a GPA of 3.5 or higher and have scored exceptionally well on PSAT/SAT/or ACT, are enrolled in Advanced Placement/International Baccalaureate/college classes, and are legal U.S. citizens or permanent residents of the U.S.

Visit the Bezos Family Foundation website to review the school and scholar criteria, view videos, and download the program flyer, application form, and an FAQ. Deadline for applications is February 11, 2011.