By Ginny Hoyle, The Herald-Sun, Durham, N.C.
Jul. 9–CARRBORO — Girls, get ready to rock!
The spunky six-member band Electric Ink and Spicy Wasabi manned — or, “wo-manned” — their instruments on the raised Carrboro ArtsCenter stage Tuesday afternoon during the fifth annual Rock & Roll Camp for Girls.
The camp, part of the nonprofit Girls Rock N.C. and run by local female rockers, provides a venue for girls 7 to 17 to create their own all-girl bands.
And instructors hold fast to a rule not often found in educational settings: the louder the better.
“This is rock ‘n’ roll, and rock ‘n’ roll is about being loud,” said instructor Beth Turner, who encouraged the 7-, 8-, and 9-year-old members of Electric Ink and Spicy Wasabi to up the volume.
The drummer’s fierce first beat inspired 9-year-old Hazel Pardington — also known as “Lil’ Obama” — to exclaim, “that shakes the ground!”
“That’s rock power,” Turner said.
“All-girl” rock power, to be exact — something that sat very well with 8-year-old Yasmin Frischemeier.
“My favorite part of the camp is being in a band with all girls,” said Yasmin, a vocalist. “When you’re in a band with all girls, you can really express yourself the way you want to.”
In addition to the camp’s elaborate jam sessions and rock lessons, the girls are encouraged to be self-confident, work as a team and recognize their own creativity through workshops in “zine-making,” clothes-making, recording, songwriting and self-expression, among others.
More than a dozen rock ‘n’ roll campers happily squirmed in their seats at two long tables in an upstairs classroom of the ArtsCenter on Tuesday afternoon during a workshop on body image.
The average American sees anywhere from 4,000 to 6,000 advertisements per day, said camp director Amelia Shull, and that can lead to a distorted view of the female body.
“These girls are still pretty little,” Shull said of the room filled with 7-, 8- and 9-year-olds. “They haven’t quite gotten to the issues of body confidence yet. The idea is to try to ask them why women are expected to work on their bodies for other people.”
Asked what’s most important to them at this age, the girls’ responses ranged from their families, to saving money for an iPod to a heart-shaped rock.
“That’s what you care about right now,” Shull said. “But what will you care about in 10 years?”
As girls become teenagers, they tend to “get more and more bogged down with their body,” said Shull, who teaches art to high-schoolers at Carolina Friends School.
Shull held up a magazine advertisement for a popular U.S. beer that featured a scantily-clad woman posed in the shape of a beer bottle.
“What do you think of this?” she asked the class.
“It’s freaky!” one girl yelled.
Another said, “They’re using us, women, as an object to make an ad and sell stuff to men.”
Another ad featured a photograph of a woman (from the neck down) wearing a Santa-inspired, skimpy bathing suit under a headline that reads: “Knock their stockings off. Put her [with “her” crossed out], them on your list.”
“Where’s her head?” Shull said of the all-body shot. “Remember what’s in your head — your brain! And we want you guys to go out into the world and make it better. We want you to have fun and we don’t want you to be angry at the world.”
Bass guitarist Chloe Grill, 9, said the workshop taught her about gender equality.
“By using women as objects, it makes it seem like we’re not equal, but I think women are just as good as men,” she said.
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