Overview
Our talks are marked by an ability to communicate emotionally and bring a room full of people together. We have reached over 100,000 girls in a movement for mental health, resiliency, and empathy.
Girls and Girl Expansive Youth Talk – Love the Skin You're In
talk description
Our signature talk, Love the Skin You're In, bonds young women and girl-expansive youth together in a hard-hitting conversation about body positivity, looks-based competition, race, social media, and the enduring power of sisterhood. We inspire girls and women beyond the competition and bullying that results from compromising popular and social media messages. We teach girls to consciously choose the conversations they entertain inside their minds, to become leaders that build community and sisterhood both within their school walls and online, and most of all, to value themselves for their substance, complexity, and unique humanity so that when they write the stories of their own lives, they are the ones holding the pen. Young women brand this talk as life changing.
DETAILS
Teaches Media Literacy, Body Positivity, and Connection. Inspires Leadership.
Girls and gender non-conforming students
Grade 4+ through Collegiate
Multiple versions to suit age group
Up to 500 Students
60 Minutes
Equipment Check List
A half hour interview with Arlington, VA media talking about the girls mental health crisis as well as the birth and impact of the Love the Skin You're In resiliency project.
Boys and Boy Expansive Youth Talk – Seventeen Seconds
Talk description
After years of successful events for girls, we have turned our attention to include their brothers. Our talk for boys and boy expansive youth explores the mental health challenges uniquely faced by young men. Using humor and tenderness, we pop open “the man box” that emerges from dominance-based masculinity and explore the pressures to appear in control, compete to win, and exert toughness over softer, stereotypically feminine traits like vulnerability and empathy. We trust our boys to become leaders of a more caring, just world. Focusing on young men’s mental health, we bring critical thinking to the slot in the social hierarchy being sold by social media influencers and help young men celebrate a common humanity that is free to champion self respect, accountability, and resiliency. Our talks invite young men to try on mindfulness practice and explore their full emotional spectrum. Follow-up resources are available for staff members who wish to tackle Andrew Tate and how he traps boys in a losing system. Reach out today to schedule a talk and learn how it takes 17 seconds to become someone's hero.
DETAILS
Teaches Media Literacy and Body Positivity. Inspires Leadership in the face of Toxic Masculinity.
Boys and gender non-conforming students
Grade 4+ through Collegiate
Multiple versions to suit age group
Up to 500 Students
60 Minutes
Equipment Check List
I join Vice Principal Daphne Wallbridge at L'Ecole Thériault Catholique Secondaire in Timmins, Ontario, Canada for a conversation about taking off the masks young men are taught to wear and reconnecting them with their empathic humanity.
All Genders Talk – Kindness in the Age of Social Media
talk description
Our all genders talk brings students together in a discussion of the popular and social media influences causing alienation and harm despite schools’ great commitment to fostering connection and belonging. We nurture mental health and kind school cultures by critiquing media portrayals of masculinity and femininity and rigid gender constructions; we nurture responsive digital citizens by bringing students home to the power of peer bullying intervention and the value of seeing themselves and one another as full human beings. The best of our girls talk and our boys talk, Kindness in the Age of Social Media, is a hard-hitting, multi-media, break-your-heart-open, feel-good option for schools struggling to address some of the greatest public health issues of our time: cultural polarization, racism, sexism, LGBTQAI+ hate, and online othering.
DETAILS
Teaches Media Literacy, Body Positivity, and Connection. Inspires Leadership.
All students
Grade 4/5, then 9 through Collegiate
Multiple versions to suit age group
Up to 500 Students
75 Minutes
Equipment Check List
Parent Talk – Love the Skin They're In
talk description
As schools recognize the significance of new awareness trends such as the #MeToo movement, these are exciting times to awaken youth to their power as leaders of social change and parents to their influence in these vital discussions. Participants learn tips for engaging challenging conversations about body image and sexting and the benefits of protective factors such as the dad/daughter connection, mindfulness practice, and communicating with compassion. Fostering interpersonal and intra-personal connection, the parent workshop is grounded in research, media literacy, and resiliency. Together, we can bring the message home to our youth that our voices, imaginations and authentic contributions are more important than physical appearances. Emma Watson put it best in her United Nations address: “Both men and women should feel free to be sensitive. Both men and women should feel free to be strong…it is time that we all perceive gender on a spectrum not as two opposing sets of ideas.”
RECOMMENDED READING LIST FOR PARENTS:
So Sexy So Soon by Jean Kilbourne
I'm Just Like So Fat by Diane Neumark-Sztainer, PhD
American Girls – Social Media and the Secret Lives of Teenagers
Enough as She Is by Rachel Simmons
Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys by Dan Kindlon and Michael Thompson
Women’s Love the Skin You’re In Power Hour
DETAILS
Teaches protective factors and mental health and resliency building strategies to parents.
Parents
Multiple versions to suit demographic
75 Minutes
Equipment Check List
BOOKS TO READ WITH YOUR DAUGHTER:
The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf
Girls and Sex by Peggy Orenstein
The Body Image Workbook for Teens: Activities to Help Girls Develop a Healthy Body Image in an Image-Obsessed World by Julia Taylor and Melissa Wardy
The Chalice and the Blade by Riane Eisler (18+)
DOCUMENTARIES AND MOVIES YOU CAN WATCH TOGETHER:
Embrace
Miss Representation
The Mask You Live In
The True Cost
Moana
Mona Lisa Smile
TALK DESCRIPTION
Brie engages adult audiences in dynamic transformation from the capricious tyranny of image to the enduring beauty of the heart. Her corporate talk challenges how we see ourselves and inspires us beyond the smoke and mirrors of media messaging landing participants in a place of levity and self-acceptance. Championing the merits of bodily movement and making sustaining food choices, from a place of self-honouring, Brie challenges audiences to embrace self compassion and upload a new operating system marked by positive inner dialogue and a sense of humour. Brie has spoken at Bay Area TEDx (above image), York Region, and various women's conferences. As one woman wrote, The speaker was fun, informative and inspired me to love me - all of me!
DETAILS
Teaches Media Literacy, Body Positivity, and Connection. Inspires Partnership-Style Leadership with Levity and Compassion.
Women and All Genders Talks
Multiple versions to suit age group
Unlimited Audience
75 Minutes
Equipment Check List
PRESENTATION NEEDS
To ensure a continuing smooth experience, we would greatly appreciate your mindful attention to the following steps, as experience has taught us that they are key to building a successful event. We recommend a 75 minute block for this talk, but can be flexible with the length. School talks are suitable for 500 students. Corporate events are suitable for 1000+.