Mirror Mirror Art Contest

In collaboration with the Girls Helping Girls team, we have worked to involve other non-profit organizations with a focus on empowering young women in this art contest. One organization is Respect RX (www.respectrx.com); its CEO, Courtney Macavinta, is planning to work with the Fund-for-Respect team beginning in January to train girls to become Respect Advocates, or girl speakers who travel to local middle schools to teach and lead activities with girls about self-confidence, body image, eating disorders, self-esteem, and positive leadership and optimism. She is a strong supporter of this project. Currently, we are working on creating promotional materials for the art contest so that we can thoroughly publicize it. One problem we confronted was with a conceptual artist from Germany who had offered to let us use one of her photographs for the promotional poster. Unfortunately, most of the artwork she offered did not depict the vision we had in mind. Not only was there a language barrier, but some pictures were difficult to interpret in meaning. We inquired about one specific photo in an attempt to apprehend and recognize the message she was trying to send through it, but unfortunately she took offense and felt that her work was being slighted. There were other cultural barriers that disabled a full comprehension of the photo on our part and we explained this to the artist along with a sincere apology. With effort, the situation was thankfully resolved with a complete understanding on both sides. We are currently working with another artist to create a poster featuring four girls of different cultures. Furthermore, an application has already been made, as well as a calendar of deadlines; we are in the process of deciding members of the panel of judges who will decide the winning artwork in each category of the contest. In addition, we are introducing our project to magazines and shows such as Seventeen and Channel One to further publicize the contest.