Girls Speak Out and Rewrite the Hollywood Beauty Myth

Lights, camera, ACTION! New Moon: The Magazine for Girls and Their Dreams is turning Hollywood inside out by challenging the film industry's harmful depiction's of women and girls with the 3rd annual ‘Turn Beauty Inside Out’ (TBIO) campaign. On May 3rd, 14 New Moon girl editors and 19 girls being honored by New Moon for Inner Beauty (in the May/June special issue) will be in Hollywood to meet with film executives. Together they will have a roundtable discussion and develop "Best Practices" to improve portrayals of girls and women on the big screen. As a result, TBIO hopes executives will work to present more thoughtful and realistic images of women in film.

TBIO supporter Janeane Garofalo said on The View, "There's an obsession in this country with the way one looks. It's become something that's a detriment to girls. Especially in adolescence…girls are sacrificing their personality to this obsession with looks."

"I'm always seeing pictures of movie stars and sexy women in magazines and on television. I know that what I'm seeing may not be real, but why would anyone want to look like that? My question is, what is it going to take to get people to like girls for who they are?"
Erin, 14, New Moon Reader

TBIO grew out of the "25 Beautiful Girls" issue of New Moon Magazine as girls voiced a need for a definition of beauty that fits them; beauty that is defined not by the size of their bust, but by the size of their character. Each year New Moon celebrates girls who rejoice in their Inner Beauty, the beauty of good works, caring hearts, and activism.

New Moon is the award-winning, international, bi-monthly magazine edited by and for girls ages 8-14. New Moon is imaginative, intelligent, and girl-created. www.newmoon.org

Stephanie Oakes is a fitness correspondent for Discovery Health Channel, a contributing editor for USA Weekend Magazine and the LA Times, and appears on NBC's 'Today in New York'. She can be reached at soakes@beststuff.com.