Amy Poehler's Smart Girls is an organization and website aimed at helping young women with life's problems in a funny but informative way. [1] [2] It was founded by actress Amy Poehler, Executive Director Meredith Walker, who was the former senior producer for Nick News and the head of talent for Saturday Night Live , and recording artist Amy Miles, who is involved in the musical content on the site. [3] Smart Girls was purchased by Legendary Entertainment in 2014. [4]
Amy Poehler's Smart Girls was originally Smart Girls at the Party, a YouTube channel dedicated to encouraging women and men to express themselves. Smart Girls at the Party was started around 2007 by Poehler and Walker and their first video was posted on YouTube in 2008. [5]
Amy Poehler was quoted on Feminist.com talking about how she and her co founders came up with the idea for Smart Girls.
"The idea came out of us wishing we had a time machine so we could go back to the younger versions of ourselves and let them know it was gonna be ok. We wanted to do a show that we would have wanted to watch at that age. And we knew we wanted to have a dance party at the end. We basically started with the dance party and worked backwards." [6]
The YouTube channel has since been changed to "Amy Poehler's Smart Girls" YouTube channel.
Smart Girls was started through YouTube and continues there today. Currently they have over 135,000 subscribers and over 8,475,000 views. The earliest video on their YouTube channel today is labeled The Feminist: Smart Girls W/ Amy Poehler, was posted in 2012 and features a young girl named Ruby explaining what feminism is. Smart Girls has grown especially in the last 3 years, they post several new videos through several different segments at least once a month. [5] [7]
Kathleen Hanna is an American singer, musician and pioneer of the feminist punk riot grrrl movement, and punk zine writer. In the early-to-mid-1990s, she was the lead singer of feminist punk band Bikini Kill, and then fronted the electronic rock band Le Tigre in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Since 2010, she has recorded as The Julie Ruin.
Christina Marie Hoff Sommers is an American author and philosopher. Specializing in ethics, she is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. Sommers is known for her critique of contemporary feminism. Her work includes the books Who Stole Feminism? (1994) and The War Against Boys (2000). She also hosts a video blog called The Factual Feminist.
Third-wave feminism is a feminist movement that began in the early 1990s, prominent in the decades prior to the fourth wave. Grounded in the civil-rights advances of the second wave, Gen X third-wave feminists born in the 1960s and 1970s embraced diversity and individualism in women, and sought to redefine what it meant to be a feminist. The third wave saw the emergence of new feminist currents and theories, such as intersectionality, sex positivity, vegetarian ecofeminism, transfeminism, and postmodern feminism. According to feminist scholar Elizabeth Evans, the "confusion surrounding what constitutes third-wave feminism is in some respects its defining feature."
Amy Poehler is an American actress and comedian. After studying improv at Chicago's Second City and ImprovOlympic in the early 1990s, Poehler co-founded the improvisational-comedy troupe Upright Citizens Brigade. The group moved to New York City in 1996, where their act became a half-hour sketch-comedy series on Comedy Central in 1998. Along with other members of the comedy group, Poehler is a founder of the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre.
Jennifer Baumgardner is a writer, activist, filmmaker, and lecturer whose work explores abortion, sex, bisexuality, rape, single parenthood, and women's power. From 2013 to 2017, she served as the Executive Director/Publisher at The Feminist Press at the City University of New York (CUNY), a feminist institution founded by Florence Howe in 1970.
The Mighty B! is an American animated television series created by former SNL cast member Amy Poehler, Cynthia True, and Erik Wiese for Nickelodeon. The series centers on Bessie Higgenbottom, an ambitious Honeybee girl scout who believes she will become The Mighty B if she collects every Honeybee badge. Bessie lives in San Francisco with her single mother Hilary, brother Ben and dog Happy. Poehler provides the voice of Bessie, who is loosely based on the character Cassie McMadison, who Poehler played on the improvisational comedy troupes Upright Citizens Brigade and Second City before she joined the cast of Saturday Night Live.
Dionne Julia Bromfield is a British soul music singer, television presenter and television personality. Her debut album, Introducing Dionne Bromfield, was released in 2009 by Amy Winehouse's Lioness Records label. She first came to public attention after performing on the British TV show Strictly Come Dancing with Amy Winehouse on backing vocals. She is known for being one of the former presenters on Friday Download. On 15 July 2021, Bromfield released the single "Silly Love", nearly 10 years after the death of her godmother Amy Winehouse.
Networked feminism is a phenomenon that can be described as the online mobilization and coordination of feminists in response to sexist, misogynistic, racist, and other discriminatory acts against minority groups. This phenomenon covers all possible definitions of what feminist movements may entail, as there have been multiple waves of feminist movements and there is no central authority to control what the term "feminism" claims to be. While one may hold a different opinion from another on the definition of "feminism", all those who believe in these movements and ideologies share the same goal of dismantling the current patriarchal social structure, where men hold primary power and higher social privileges above all others.
Porn for women, women's porn or women's pornography is pornography aimed specifically at the female market, and often produced by women. It rejects the view that pornography is only for men, and seeks to make porn that women enjoy watching instead of what is being offered in male-centric mainstream pornography.
"Flawless" is a song recorded by American singer Beyoncé from her self-titled fifth studio album (2013). Knowles wrote the track with Rashad Muhammad, Terius Nash, Chauncey Hollis and Raymond DeAndre Martin, with production handled by Hollis, Knowles, Martin, Muhammad, and Boots. An early version of the song, titled "Bow Down / I Been On", was released onto the Internet by Beyoncé in March 2013.
Bethany Noel Mota is an American video blogger. Starting with her YouTube channel, Macbarbie07, created in 2009, she rose to fame for her haul videos, in which she shows her fashion and style purchases via the internet. She uploads videos of outfit ideas, makeup and hair tutorials, recipes, and do it yourself ideas. She has since expanded into her own fashion line at Aéropostale. She has gone on multiple tours, which she calls her "Motavatours" to meet and interact with fans. She also appeared on Season 19 of Dancing with the Stars.
Big Girls Don't Cry: The Election that Changed Everything for American Women is a 2010 non-fiction book written by the American journalist Rebecca Traister and published by Free Press. The book focuses on women's contributions to and experiences of the 2008 United States presidential election. Traister places particular focus on four main political figures—Hillary Clinton, Sarah Palin, Michelle Obama, and Elizabeth Edwards—as well as women in the media, including the journalists Katie Couric and Rachel Maddow, and the comedians Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, who portrayed Sarah Palin and Hillary Clinton on Saturday Night Live, respectively. Traister also describes her personal experience of the electoral campaign and her shift from supporting John Edwards to Hillary Clinton.
Know Your IX is an American political advocacy group founded in 2013. It aims to inform students of their right to an education free from gender-based violence under Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, which prohibits sex discrimination in institutions receiving federal government funding. The organization also seeks to influence legislation and policy to improve federal enforcement of Title IX and treatment of student victims.
Feminist children's literature is the writing of children's literature through a feminist lens. Children's literature and women's literature have many similarities. Both often deal with being seen as weak and placed towards the bottom of a hierarchy. In this way feminist ideas are regularly found in the structure of children's literature. Feminist criticism of children's literature is therefore expected, since it is a type of feminist literature. Feminist children's literature has played a critical role for the feminist movement, especially in the past half century. In her book Feminism Is for Everybody: Passionate Politics, bell hooks states her belief that all types of media, including writing and children's books, need to promote feminist ideals. She argues "Children's literature is one of the most crucial sites for feminist education for critical consciousness precisely because beliefs and identities are still being formed". The cover of hooks' book, drawn by Laura DeSantis, depicts children alongside adults, showing the importance of the youth. The presence of feminism in children's literature has evolved over the years, but the overall message and goals have remained consistent.
Feminist activism in hip hop is a feminist movement based by hip hop artists. The activism movement involves doing work in graffiti, break dancing, and hip hop music. Hip hop has a history of being a genre that sexually objectifies and disrespects women ranging from the usage of video vixens to explicit rap lyrics. Within the subcultures of graffiti and breakdancing, sexism is more evident through the lack of representation of women participants. In a genre notorious for its sexualization of women, feminist groups and individual artists who identify as feminists have sought to change the perception and commodification of women in hip hop. This is also rooted in cultural implications of misogyny in rap music.
Breeana Danielle "Bree" Essrig is an American actress, writer, host, internet personality, and pornographic model known for her comedic writing and appearances on the news and current events series SourceFed. Essrig joined SourceFed as a host in 2015, and in 2017 was brought on to star in the daily Twitter series #whatshappening.
Ruby Karp is an American writer and comedian.
Duncanville is an American adult animated sitcom created by Amy Poehler, Mike Scully and Julie Scully for the Fox Broadcasting Company. The series features the voices of Poehler, Ty Burrell, Riki Lindhome, Zach Cherry, Yassir Lester, Betsy Sodaro, Rashida Jones, Joy Osmanski, and Wiz Khalifa. The series premiered in the United States on February 16, 2020.
Moxie, stylized as MOXiE! is a 2021 American comedy-drama film directed by Amy Poehler. Tamara Chestna and Dylan Meyer adapted the screenplay from the 2017 novel of the same name by Jennifer Mathieu. It stars Hadley Robinson, Alycia Pascual-Peña, Lauren Tsai, Patrick Schwarzenegger, Nico Hiraga, and Poehler. The film focuses on 16-year-old Vivian, who starts a feminist zine to empower the young women in her high school, as they contend with bullying, sexual harassment, and rape. The film was released on March 3, 2021, by Netflix and received mixed reviews from critics.
Keah Brown is an American disability rights activist, author, journalist, and writer. She is also known as the creator of the hashtag #DisabledAndCute, which first went viral in February 2017 and caught the attention of such celebrities as Sophia Bush and Brie Larson. Brown has been featured on 3rd Hour of Today to discuss her first published book, The Pretty One: On Life, Pop Culture, Disability, and Other Reasons to Fall in Love, with Me.