Today I am introducing a new series highlighting individuals who are creating media or marketing products with positive messages for children and youth, and individuals using their creativity to promote media literacy among the young.
Since we are here on the cusp of the official start of summer, and since The National Council on Skin Cancer Prevention has declared today “Don’t Fry Day,” I thought I would start with TGR Body sunscreen, created by Tracee Sioux.
Tracee Sioux is a nationally recognized gender and parenting expert and writes The Girl Revolution, a website about parenting daughters.
“I started the TGR Body company,” Ms. Sioux told me, “because I’ve been writing The Girl Revolution for five years and the thing I hear over and over from women is that they carry incredible body pain. Pain about how they look, how they never feel they measure up to advertising on beauty products, pain that their bodies are traditionally objectified by marketing and media about beauty.”
The labels on those products, she points out on her blog, can impart one message: “I am not good enough as I am, unless I devote a portion of myself to improvement with the products of this bottle, which might improve my flawed, imperfect self.”
Or, they can send a message Ms. Sioux prefers:
“I am a beautiful human being, which has a right to exist and be heard just as I am and seen as beautiful in the way I was made, by a miracle of birth and natural selection and holy creativity.”
I prefer that second one, too.
TGR Body labels feature girls being active: hiking, dancing, snowboarding, surfing, and include affirming messages. Also, since she is concerned about skin care products that contain substances which are suspects in the early onset of puberty in girls, her products contain no “craptastic ingredients.”
Ms. Sioux sent me a sample of Natural Beauty Sunblock Mist, which features a silhouette of a girl snowboarding. I liked it a lot. It felt nice going on, didn’t leave an unpleasant film on the skin, and it wasn’t all perfumy. Now you might assume I was biased and wanted to like this product, and I was. So just to be sure I wasn’t imaging things, I shared it with a couple of other people on a sunny, snowy day in February in Vermont. I didn’t tell them anything about it. It got positive reviews all around. Certainly it’s worth a try – especially right now, since she’s offering free shipping.
Marketing, Media and Childhood 
This is so encouraging! Thanks for sharing.
Thanks, Jennifer! I can't wait to get to the next one. And thank you for the wonderful media literacy work you are doing on your blog.
Hey! You beat me to the punch with our positive picks series! ha. I'm in love with the TGRBody packaging look and bold/healthy girl approach, so when we were out with the skiboat and a pile of teen girls this afternoon I said to myself, "Memorial Day, water's up, time to get Tracee's post ready…sun-n-fun with summer comin' soon" Pulled out my file to ask her a bunch of ingredient Qs, since I just finished reading "Sunscreen Caveat Read Those Labels" on UVA stuff in the Chron Wednesday. http://j.mp/mqySPJSo, Tracee, what say you? Holds up? I know you were going for EWG style standards, etc. so am planning on springboarding off their new 2011 release…congrats on this great coverage, and Erin as always, you rock.
Hi Amy, I was just reading about the Environmental Working Group's new report about iffy ingredients in sunscreen. Pretty scary. Thanks for mentioning that.