WATERVILLE – If anyone doubts the power of advertising on the way girls perceive themselves, watch two hours of kids’ TV programming, a noted author told some 200 educators, guidance counselors and health providers gathered Tuesday at Colby College.

Colby professor Lyn Mikel Brown said the message for girls is clear:

“Only boys play Legos. Only boys play with action figures. Only boys play with fast cars. In commercials with boys, there are lots of powerful words like ‘power’ and ‘take charge.’ The girls, however, are portrayed as princesses and fairies and hugging things and taking care of things. There are lots of hearts and hugs.”

Brown was the keynote speaker of “Girlfighting, Connecting the Dots … Changing the Culture,” an all-day seminar designed to provide insight into the relationship between media and girls’ development.

Kids experience an average of 3,000 media images a day, said Brown, and without some ability to analyze the ads, they start believing the messages embedded in them: “I’m not pretty enough, cool enough, strong enough, sexy enough.”

When they don’t measure up to the images after buying the product, Brown said, they begin to feel worse about themselves than they did before.

“The problem is not girls,” argued Brown, who has written several books on the subject. “The problem is a culture that denigrates and demoralizes women and turns them into commodities, then gets a kick out of watching the divide-and-conquer consequences.

“There’s an old saying: ‘Men kill their weak, women kill their strong.’ If we would give girls legitimate avenues to power and value their minds as much as their bodies, they’d be less likely to go down those nasty, underhanded or openly hostile roads, and less likely to take their legitimate rage out on other girls,” Brown said.

She said the issue is less a direct consequence of mass media and more a consequence of marketing.

“Marketers are savvy,” she said. “They pick up on girls’ insecurities about fitting in and exploit that.”

Brown maintains that the constant messages a girl receives ultimately change her. “A second-grader makes a decision based on what she wants. An eighth-grade girl makes choices based on what others want, what others feel,” said Brown.

In “The Lion King II,” a recently released children’s movie, Brown said the message is quickly made that there won’t be any fun in the jungle anymore because the new lion on the block “is a girl.”

“The media is all about getting younger and younger girls invested in buying teen products,” she said. “The average age of the reader of Seventeen [magazine] is now 12.

“This media message creates a system of divide and conquer among girls: good girls versus bad girls, girlie girls versus tomboys,” said Brown.

Some of those who attended the workshop have created programs designed to help support girls’ healthy development and were looking for inspiration.

Susan York of Houlton is an artist working with Sisters ‘n Sight, a theater program for high school and middle school students funded by the Aroostook County Community Action Program.

“Sisters ‘n Sight is about being who you are and seeking alternative solutions for negative behavior,” she said.

Karen Heck, director of Hardy Girls, Healthy Women in Waterville, which Brown co-founded, said it provides a safe climate and programs such as Girls Unlimited, which focuses on girls in fifth through eighth grades.

“Our work is based on how girls lose their voices at that age, as the culture begins to silence them. We want to keep their voices strong,” Heck said. “We are counteracting the media message that they have to be thin, sexy and beautiful, that it is not about who they are but about creating products they can buy.”