Chicks Who Click began hosting conferences earlier this year for media and tech-savvy women around the country. Their first conference was held in Boulder, Colorado in January and sounds like it was a pleasant mix of skiing and mingling of the minds.
The organization seems intent on forming a community through social media (hmm, haven't heard that before!) but focuses on empowering women to create, connect and collaborate. They host work shops, have guest speakers and encourage women to network at their events. What a great idea, and a nice way to gain access to attendees and speakers who are already successful in the field, looking to give back or mentor others.
The next event is scheduled for May 15 and 16 in Kansas City, but other upcoming conferences will be held in Dallas, San Jose and Raleigh. Hopefully at some point they will come a little closer to me, but it would be fun to see a new city while attending one of their conferences.
Nobody is perfect, least of all me, but when you build an entire campaign around "freeing women from beauty stereotypes" one year, should you really partner with a television show that celebrates scantily-clad, underage New York society girls the next? Well, Dove seems to be doing just that with their new "Dove Go Fresh presents Gossip Girl: real NYC stories revealed" campaign. For the next four Mondays (including tonight) they will air commercials in-between Gossip Girl show breaks featuring real New York women and their inspiring stories.
Granted, Gossip Girl is popular with women (though I can admit it is ridiculous, I haven't missed an episode), but I just don't know that featuring real women and their successes (a fashion designer, a couture wedding gown designer, a filmmaker and an "It Girl"/style director for Nylon Magazine) will break through to viewers intent on seeing who Chuck Bass beds this week. Plus, the women featured, with the exception of the filmmaker, all work in the fashion industry, which happens to be one of the industries Dove's Campaign for Real Beauty has charged with giving women negative body issues. Interesting choices. How about a teacher, an aid worker or even the head of a (non-fashion) company? Didn't tie into the show as well, I guess.
So my conclusion here is that Dove saw the opportunity to address their target audience, young women, and diluted their positive message an eensy bit in order to sell some deodorant. I mean, these are still inspiring successful women, right? They made it in the cut-throat fashion world, started their own bridal lines, wrote and produced their own films and became style mavens. I am sure the Blair Waldorfs and Serena Van Der Woodsens out there would applaud them. That is, before they decided to crush them for standing in their way.
