Join me and other girl advocates for a chat about Lego and their new “Friends” set for girls. I love Lego but I don’t love this new set. More than 30,000 other people have signed petitions saying they agree.

Find out why and share your opinions.

Join the chat on January 12 – 8 pm Central, 6pm Pacific, 9pm Eastern.  Just log onto twitter and search the hashtag #girlsnow.

See you there!

When you think of girls playing with Legos do you think of this?

Or this?

It's probably no surprise that I like the top image better!  And I wish I could say the same for Lego executives. In the next few days Lego will roll out brand new sets designed for girls ages 5 and up, with the theme, "Friends."  The sets were developed with four years (!) of research into what girls want from Legos. Some bloggers I love are trying to raise Lego's consciousness and I'm backing them up. Powered by Girl - PBG started the ball rolling. Supporters include  Pigtail Pals Reel Girl  Spark Summit.

My research was admittedly with a smaller sample. My daughters loved and played with Legos constantly back in the days before any "sets."  They built their own people from the basic red, green, blue & yellow pieces because we didn't have any people in our tub of pieces.  This led to people with wheels for feet and people of all shapes and sizes.

My point isn't to be nostalgic. Let's ask Lego to expand their vision of girls and their interests in the next round of sets they design for girls.

Just a suggestion, Lego:  Take the four girls from The 4th Motor team of Wisconsin who won the 2011 First Robotics Lego League North American open robotics challenge (1st all-girl team to win)!

One of the team shared some of their experiences and hard work in New Moon Girls' March-April 2011 magazine and on newmoon.com.  And here's some video of them winning the N.A. competition. All this, and a little herstory about the first computer programmer Ada Lovelace, encourages more girls to do creative problem-solving with Legos - inspiration, pure and simple.

This winning team of girls should lead development of Lego's next set for girls. I'm more than glad to help Lego learn out how to share power with girls in developing great products for them without reducing to lowest-common-denominator stereotypes.  It can be done and sustained, as we've done for nearly 20 years now.

What do you say Lego?

If you want to share this idea with Lego write to them and also post your letter here or on Facebook:

Sexualization of girls in media is increasing. Parents want practical ways to counter the harmful effects. A Twitter chat Dec 5 – 8.30 pm cst #girlsnow will help. ABC-TV’s 20/20 called the segment “Too Young to Be Sexy?”  It focused on parents who sexualized their young daughters to help them compete in girls’ beauty pageants.

The segment included great comments from Dana Edell of Spark Summit – one of New Moon Girls’ sister organizations who support girls, young women and parents in fighting against the increasing sexualization of girls in media.

Sadly, the 20/20 segment stopped stop of talking about the solutions offered by a growing group of small businesses and non-profits including: American Psychological Association, Pigtail Pals, Shaping Youth, SheHeroes, Powered by Girl, Hardy Girls, Princess Free Zone,  Girls Inc., Geena Davis Institute, About-Face, Girl Scouts of the USA, and more.

So we’re going to help you with solutions!  Join us Dec 5 at 6.30 pm pst – 7.30 mst, 8.30 cst, 9.30 est for the #girlsnow twitter & blog chat on solutions that parents, teachers and youth workers can use every day.

We want to hear your solutions then, too!

Monday Dec 5  at 9.30 pm est/8.30 cst/7.30 mst/6.30 pst for a chat on Twitter. Follow hash tag  #girlsnow. Add it to the end of your tweets so we can see your question or comment. 

Before the chat  follow:

• @Nancy_Newmoon
• @PigtailPals
• @BeABetterWoman
• @AudreyBrashich
• @DrRobyn

and others on the list below .

If you’re not on Twitter you can still participate live on my blog by clicking this sentence. We want to hear from you!

If you can’t make it live, the transcript will be available afterward at my blog.

My #GirlsNow c0-advocates are:

Amy Harman of Becoming A Better Woman

Dr. Robyn Silverman, author of Good Girls Don’t Get Fat

Melissa Wardy of Pigtail Pals

Audrey Brashich, author of All Made Up

More participants in this special chat are:

Amy Jussel, Founder of Shaping Youth, @shapingyouth

Lyn Mikel Brown, Professor, Colby College,  author of Packaging Girlhood, co-founder of SPARK and Hardy Girls Healthy Women, @lynmikel

Dana Edell,  @sparksummit

Megan Williams, Executive Director, Hardy Girls Healthy Women, @hghw

Jennifer Shewmaker, Professor, Abilene Christian University, @drjenshewmaker

Jennifer Berger, Founder of About-Face, @aboutfacesf

HUGE thanks to our 65 donors on  Give to the Max Day 11-16.  You donated $3,763! Our match from an anonymous donor brings the total to $7526!  I’m thrilled with your outpouring of support.  Especially as we only started the campaign on Nov 14.

Because of your generosity we will offer 251 MORE scholarships to New Moon Girls for low-income girls.  With most of the scholarships going to organizations, libraries and schools where 50 or more girls benefit from each membership, that conservatively means that 12,801 more girls will be reached in the next year. Your gift means we won’t have to leave girls, schools and libraries starving for healthy media.

A very special thanks to the Rider family who will receive a beautiful Celebrate Girls poster by artist Farah Aria.

Thank You for giving girls the lasting gift of empowering media.

On Give to the Max Day, Wednesday Nov. 16, you can do just that!

This special day for non-profits gives you the incredible opportunity to join with others and donate to our non-profit partner Mind on the Media to support the New Moon Girls scholarship fund. Our goal is supporting hundreds of girls with the power of positive media that New Moon Girls gives them.

Why is your gift so important on this day?

We donate many memberships to low-income girls. But the need is greater than our small organization can meet on its own. Your donation means that we won’t have to leave girls, schools and libraries starving for healthy media.  And for just $10 (or more!) on Give to the Max Day, you’ll get us that much closer to this goal!

Your gift will go further on Give to the Max Day! 

Your gift won’t only benefit our girls’ futures but it can also help:

1) Win a Golden Ticket! $1,000 will be given to a random donor’s charity every hour. You could be one of those 24 lucky donors!  At the end of the day one donor will be awarded a $10,000 Grand Prize Golden ticket donation for their charity – that could be YOU! Improve your odds of winning the Golden ticket in the following ways:

• Night Owl? Give between 12am – 5am Central Standard Time on November 16 – in other time zones it will be earlier or later – check time zones at http://www.timezoneconverter.com/cgi-bin/tzc.tzc
• Give multiple $10 donations at different hours throughout the day

2) We have a matching grant of $5000 on Give to the Max Day – that’s over 150 more scholarships for girls who otherwise would not have access to New Moon Girls. But we need your help to earn this match.

On Nov. 16, let’s give something back to our girls- positive media to inspire and empower them!  Let’s Give to the Max!

Thank You

Nancy Gruver, Founder

p.s. Win a Original Art Poster & Acclaim! If you inspire your friends to raise $500 as a group for NMG scholarships on Nov. 16, we will send you a beautiful Celebrate Girls poster with original artwork by Farah Aria. Plus we’ll feature a picture of you and your achievement in our e-news and on our web page! Click here now to set up your own campaign.