Katie

Moriarty
News Release
Draft #1

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 2/10/15

Contact: Margaret McEvoy

National Girls Collaborative Project
804-516-9999
margaretme@ngcp.com

New Beautiful You Campaign helps to promote self-esteem and combat
negative social media videos.

RICHMOND, Va. February 10th, 2015 -- The National Girls Collaborative

Project (NGCP) announced their new Beautiful You campaign today; this campaign
was created by NGCP program director Margaret McEvoy to combat the recent
trend in the teenage Am I Pretty? social media videos.

The recent trend started on YouTube and there are now over 500,000 videos
of young people asking the world to validate their physical appearance. Teenagers
primarily ages 13-16 post videos of themselves asking watchers to comment below
with their reactions.

These videos open up the doorway for negative comments against young women,
says McEvoy the majority of the comments these women get are from anonymous
people wanting to put them down.



One video of a 13-year-old girl from New Jersey has received over 72,000
views and 2,000 comments, most of which are negative and demeaning. Some
comments even tell this young woman to commit suicide. The list of negative
comments goes on for several pages all of which are horrifying to a fragile teenager.

The Beautiful You campaign is aimed at teenage girls to help better
improve self-esteem. NGCP is asking young women to post videos explaining what
they believe makes them a beautiful person on the inside. McEvoy hopes that this
positive form of social media videos will help young women realized that they do
not need validation from strangers.

It is all about what you feel and what you think makes you beautiful, not what
others think of you Says McEvoy.


Girls begin to become more focused on their physical appearance during
their pre-teen years, according to Anita Gurian at the NYU Child Study Center. Self-
esteem becomes too closely tied to physical attributes and girls feel they cant
measure up to societies standards. Gurian believes that although women have made
gains in education and employment they are losing the self-esteem war. Research
has shown that appearance-related teasing creates body dissatisfaction and that an
association also exists between negative weight-related commentary and eating
disorders.

Between 5th and 9th grade, gifted girls, perceiving that smarts aren't sexy, hide
their accomplishments. Says Gurian.

The Beautiful You campaign wants girls to focus on more than physical
appearances. NGCP hopes that young women will take pride in their
accomplishments, intellect and creativity instead of hiding under societies norms of
beauty.

Am I Pretty? YouTube videos have sparked conversations about cyber
bullying and social media. Anonymous comments open up doors for vicious scrutiny
against these young women. The Huffington Post described these videos as self-
abuse in their article What The Am I Pretty? YouTube trend Is Really Saying.

They are a torrential stream of anonymous, unfathomably vicious bullying, often
coming from adult voices. Says Elizabeth Perle, Huffington Post writer.

The National Girls Collaborative Project wants to stop the hate now and asks
that young people, and adults, stop commenting on these videos. The cyber bullying
and hate will not be continued if people begin to ignore this YouTube video trend.

Goals of the NGCP include maximizing access to shared resources for young
women, strengthen capacity and use the leverage of networking. The National Girls
Collaborative Project was created in 2012 and is funded through volunteers and
donations. More information about NGCP can be found online at
www.ngcproject.org.

For more information about the Beautiful You campaign or The National Girls
Collaborative Project please contact Margaret McEvoy at 804-516-9999
margaretme@ngcp.com.

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