Little Divas girls program - February 15th
On February 15th, just after Valentine's Day, the Little Divas came back together to continue their exploration of love and healthy relationships. We didn't expressly focus on or relate the content to Valentine's Day in particular, but the themes we were dealing with were quite timely nonetheless.
For our ice-breaker discussion question to start the day's session off, we asked the girls to share what they would do if they could become invisible, but only for the next 15 minutes. This definitely got their creativity warmed up, but it was also interesting to see the challenge of coming up with something that they could achieve in 15 minutes. After all, they were only given invisibility, not super-human speed or the ability to fly!
The girls really had a good time with the electronic version of charades that we played before, so we used that as our ice-breaker game again this week. It not only allows the girls to use their close connections with each other in order to communicate with their team during charades, but it also gets them up and moving, and their creative juices flowing!
After our ice-breakers were done, we did a review of what we learned and discussed last week with the what is love/what is not love game, which highlighted habits and behaviours from healthy and unhealthy relationships. In the game we played the previous week, the girls had pieces of paper with different statements on them, and they had to throw their paper into the basket they thought it corresponded to, between either "Love" or "Not Love". Two of the statements that were meant to fall into the "Not Love" category, but that are often mistaken for what love does look like, also demonstrated for us that those stereotypes or misconceptions still exist even for younger people in today's day and age. The two statements were:
-"If someone teases you, it's because they like you."
-"If someone says they don't want to date you, you should be determined to win their love."
We then discussed with the girls why these statements are not actually reflective of what healthy love looks like, and what happens when people believe these things. We talked about how if someone likes you, they shouldn't make fun of or tease you, and that if people think that someone being mean to them means they like them, they may let that person really hurt them and bring down their own self-confidence because they believe that that person is saying those negative things because they care about them. But people that care about you should say nice things about you and lift you up, not bully you and put you down. We also discussed how if someone says they don't want to date you, that their wishes and their feelings need to be respected and you should not continue to pursue them to "win their love". We connected this message to consent for the girls, and emphasized that everyone has the right to say no and to have their "no" answer be taken seriously with genuine respect, not as a challenge to try to wear the person down until they feel pressured to say yes and cave in, even though they really did not want to date this person all along. This was an important opportunity to introduce the concept of consent to the girls in an age-appropriate way, so that they will understand and practice consent as a natural part of their existence in all aspects of their lives and interactions with others.
Next, we looked at some examples of "love" and healthy/unhealthy relationships from famous Disney movies that many people just unconditionally accept as being wonderful examples of romance. The scenes we discussed were from Sleeping Beauty, Beauty and the Beast, and Pocahontas.
For Sleeping Beauty, we talked about what would happen in the real world if someone kissed someone who was unconscious, like Sleeping Beauty was when the Prince kissed her. The implication with that scene is that if you kiss someone who is unconscious or kiss someone by surprise, that they will like it. We once again emphasized consent, and that kissing anyone without them giving you permission to, no matter how romantic it may seem, is wrong.
For Beauty and the Beast, we looked at the scene where Belle has taken her father's place as the Beast's prisoner/captive, and then the Beast tries to force Belle to have dinner with him, and when she says no, he gets extremely angry and screams at her that if she won't eat with him, she won't eat at all. We discussed how this scene, and the overall story of the film, implies that if you control and manipulate someone, they will eventually love you. We of course emphasized that controlling and manipulating someone is not what someone who loves and cares about us does, and that that would actually be a very unhealthy relationship in the real world.
With Pocahontas, we explained to the girls how the real story that the Disney film is based on was not a romantic love story at all, but rather a young Indigenous girl being kidnapped from her family, community, and culture by a white man who forced her to marry him and live with him in England. We talked about how this violent history of colonization is often erased or re-written to seem like it was something Indigenous people went along with and even wanted for themselves. In the Disney version of Pocahontas, she pursues John Smith as much as he pursues her, and their relationship is seen as an equal romantic partnership, not one between a unconsenting child and an adult man taking her from her family and way of life.
After the discussions surrounding the Disney examples, the girls continued to work on their DIY zines - Love According to Me! Last week the girls started their zines with sections like "Map of My Heart", "If You Love Me", and "If I Love You". They finished working on those sections and added the new sections "My Boundaries", "If You Cross My Boundaries", and "I Am Easy to Love Because". This gave the girls a chance to think about and examine what they do and don't feel comfortable with, and therefore where their own personal boundaries lie. Then they were able to think about what happens or would happen for them and for the other person if someone were to cross their boundaries. This once again encouraged the girls to think about their own autonomy and consent, even when it does not pertain directly to a romantic relationship.
This was a very important session, and not only did we discuss and explore consent, our own personal boundaries, what healthy and unhealthy relationships look like, etc, but we also did a mini-lesson on media literacy with the Disney clips and discussions. Media literacy often comes up in our sessions without us even needing to expressly label it as a "media literacy lesson". Media literacy is an increasingly essential skill in our digital age, so we're glad to be talking about it with the girls in various different ways through our sessions.
For our ice-breaker discussion question to start the day's session off, we asked the girls to share what they would do if they could become invisible, but only for the next 15 minutes. This definitely got their creativity warmed up, but it was also interesting to see the challenge of coming up with something that they could achieve in 15 minutes. After all, they were only given invisibility, not super-human speed or the ability to fly!
The girls really had a good time with the electronic version of charades that we played before, so we used that as our ice-breaker game again this week. It not only allows the girls to use their close connections with each other in order to communicate with their team during charades, but it also gets them up and moving, and their creative juices flowing!
After our ice-breakers were done, we did a review of what we learned and discussed last week with the what is love/what is not love game, which highlighted habits and behaviours from healthy and unhealthy relationships. In the game we played the previous week, the girls had pieces of paper with different statements on them, and they had to throw their paper into the basket they thought it corresponded to, between either "Love" or "Not Love". Two of the statements that were meant to fall into the "Not Love" category, but that are often mistaken for what love does look like, also demonstrated for us that those stereotypes or misconceptions still exist even for younger people in today's day and age. The two statements were:
-"If someone teases you, it's because they like you."
-"If someone says they don't want to date you, you should be determined to win their love."
We then discussed with the girls why these statements are not actually reflective of what healthy love looks like, and what happens when people believe these things. We talked about how if someone likes you, they shouldn't make fun of or tease you, and that if people think that someone being mean to them means they like them, they may let that person really hurt them and bring down their own self-confidence because they believe that that person is saying those negative things because they care about them. But people that care about you should say nice things about you and lift you up, not bully you and put you down. We also discussed how if someone says they don't want to date you, that their wishes and their feelings need to be respected and you should not continue to pursue them to "win their love". We connected this message to consent for the girls, and emphasized that everyone has the right to say no and to have their "no" answer be taken seriously with genuine respect, not as a challenge to try to wear the person down until they feel pressured to say yes and cave in, even though they really did not want to date this person all along. This was an important opportunity to introduce the concept of consent to the girls in an age-appropriate way, so that they will understand and practice consent as a natural part of their existence in all aspects of their lives and interactions with others.
Next, we looked at some examples of "love" and healthy/unhealthy relationships from famous Disney movies that many people just unconditionally accept as being wonderful examples of romance. The scenes we discussed were from Sleeping Beauty, Beauty and the Beast, and Pocahontas.
For Sleeping Beauty, we talked about what would happen in the real world if someone kissed someone who was unconscious, like Sleeping Beauty was when the Prince kissed her. The implication with that scene is that if you kiss someone who is unconscious or kiss someone by surprise, that they will like it. We once again emphasized consent, and that kissing anyone without them giving you permission to, no matter how romantic it may seem, is wrong.
For Beauty and the Beast, we looked at the scene where Belle has taken her father's place as the Beast's prisoner/captive, and then the Beast tries to force Belle to have dinner with him, and when she says no, he gets extremely angry and screams at her that if she won't eat with him, she won't eat at all. We discussed how this scene, and the overall story of the film, implies that if you control and manipulate someone, they will eventually love you. We of course emphasized that controlling and manipulating someone is not what someone who loves and cares about us does, and that that would actually be a very unhealthy relationship in the real world.
With Pocahontas, we explained to the girls how the real story that the Disney film is based on was not a romantic love story at all, but rather a young Indigenous girl being kidnapped from her family, community, and culture by a white man who forced her to marry him and live with him in England. We talked about how this violent history of colonization is often erased or re-written to seem like it was something Indigenous people went along with and even wanted for themselves. In the Disney version of Pocahontas, she pursues John Smith as much as he pursues her, and their relationship is seen as an equal romantic partnership, not one between a unconsenting child and an adult man taking her from her family and way of life.
After the discussions surrounding the Disney examples, the girls continued to work on their DIY zines - Love According to Me! Last week the girls started their zines with sections like "Map of My Heart", "If You Love Me", and "If I Love You". They finished working on those sections and added the new sections "My Boundaries", "If You Cross My Boundaries", and "I Am Easy to Love Because". This gave the girls a chance to think about and examine what they do and don't feel comfortable with, and therefore where their own personal boundaries lie. Then they were able to think about what happens or would happen for them and for the other person if someone were to cross their boundaries. This once again encouraged the girls to think about their own autonomy and consent, even when it does not pertain directly to a romantic relationship.
This was a very important session, and not only did we discuss and explore consent, our own personal boundaries, what healthy and unhealthy relationships look like, etc, but we also did a mini-lesson on media literacy with the Disney clips and discussions. Media literacy often comes up in our sessions without us even needing to expressly label it as a "media literacy lesson". Media literacy is an increasingly essential skill in our digital age, so we're glad to be talking about it with the girls in various different ways through our sessions.
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