Five Videos I Wish Every Middle School Girl Could See

When I’m trying to share feminism with my friends, dropping Manifesta on their desks or barraging their Facebook walls with links from the Ms. blog are often dead ends. I found that YouTube videos are an awesome way to disseminate this information. When I see the ideas that I subscribe to put out so clearly and grippingly, often with humor, I wish that every girl could see them. Maybe not every girl would agree, and that’s fine, but at least the opinions would be exposed to them in a palatable way. Here are my top five short videos, all with a feminist vibe, that I wish every middle school girl could see.

1. Good Girls Don’t Get Fat I think that this video would make a lot of ideas suddenly click in many young girls’s minds. They may know that they’re valued for more than their looks, but still put a ton of energy into being thinner. This video, to promote Dr. Robyn Silverman’s book of the same title, is very eye-opening.
2. The Girl Effect In a different vein than most of these videos- the issues affecting the middle class, middle school girls of today- this one is about girls around the world and how sexism, far more influential than it is in the US today, rules their lives. It’s incredible to see how much the world could improve
3. Billy Bricks: A Poem (This link is a little tough to get to- click on it, then scroll to the bottom of the page, and click the video there, with the girl’s face with her hands on her cheeks as the screenshot.) The Arts Effect NYC is an awesome theatre group that, with students writing the plays they perform, provides an extremely authentic voice to the preteen girls of today. This video shows that the encounters many girls assume must occur in their daily lives are actually sexual harassment, and not to be tolerated.
4. Why Girls Sometimes Wanna Be Boys By the same theatre company, I found this to be one of the most honest videos I’d ever seen in my life. These girls are brilliant. I think every adult who deals with girls this age- teachers, parents, coaches, everyone- should see this video.
5. Target Women: Story Time Target: Women, a former segment on the former show infoMania, just might be the funniest, feminist-est series I have ever seen. Although (unshockingly) targeted towards adult women, it truly exemplifies how much the media and advertising especially impact girls.

If you have girls this age in your life, please share these videos with them! And if you have any others, please comment!