APA advises, consents on film about teen girls

With APA coaching, an acclaimed production company will document strengths that allow adolescent girls to thrive.

By Patrick A. McGuire
Monitor Senior Editor

The dimly lit crossroads where psychology and film so often blindly collide is about to get brighter. An award-winning Chicago educational film company and an APA presidential task force have agreed to help each other reach a common goal: to promote the inner strength of adolescent girls in surmounting the myriad social obstacles to their success.

The alliance came about when Kartemquin Educational Films, producers of the award-winning documentary 'Hoop Dreams,' approached the APA?s Presidential Task Force on Adolescent Girls: Strengths and Stresses, for advice on a project about girls growing up in America.

Funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the film?s original focus was the barriers to success that young girls face, especially how negative media stereotypes erode their self-esteem. But, says Maria Finitzo, the film?s director, 'Since meeting with APA, we changed our focus. Instead of looking at girls from what?s wrong, we?re taking the perspective of what?s right. There are a lot of strong girls out there.'

'I think it?s a perfect fit,' adds Karen Zager, PhD, co-chair of the APA task force. 'We encouraged them to look at the strengths girls have and not show adolescent girls as drug addicted and pregnant and defiant and anorexic. There are a lot of girls who don?t fit that stereotype.'

The film, now in its initial production stage, will follow five adolescent girls in the Chicago area over an 18-month period.

'We?ll be with them in school, after school, at home, when they hang out with friends, during events in their lives,' says Finitzo. 'We will look at the cultural messages these girls perceive and the effects of those messages on how they grow up.'

Coaching and advising

APA?s involvement with Finitzo is a joint project of the task force and APA?s Office of Public Communications. Finitzo and her creative team will be coached on issues facing adolescent girls and on strategies to ensure that taking part in the film project does not harm the girls. APA will also be ready to advise the filmmakers about any sensitive issues regarding the girls that come up during the project.

For its part, the task force has already begun advising Finitzo on the process of selecting the five girls and makes no bones about pushing its own agenda.

'We felt the film was an opportunity to work with a group of people who were well-meaning and connected with the quality product ?Hoop Dreams,?' says task force co-chair Norine Johnson, PhD. 'But we felt there were some flaws in ?Hoop Dreams,? and that perhaps we could help to keep them from being repeated.'

Some task force members, she said, were concerned that 'Hoop Dreams' may have stereotyped young African-American boys and, because it focused only on basketball, limited its impact.

'We talked to Maria about broadening the competencies of the girls,' says Johnson. 'For instance, they will not just focus on girl ballerinas. They will look at the variety of competencies that girls bring to the table.'

Finitzo, a veteran independent filmmaker, was not associated with 'Hoop Dreams'?though her partner, Susan Suffredin, was an editor on that project.

What she likes about Kartemquin, says Finitzo, 'is that they are patient as they search out a story.'

Patience has also been a virtue pursued by Johnson in promoting the cause of young girls. Her long interest in the topic was evident three years ago, when, as president of Div. 35 (Women), her keynote address focused on new ways women were beginning to regard their own strengths.

Positive strength

'Women were starting to define strength not just as a process to endure, but also to enact,' Johnson recalls. 'We have always had enacters in history. But for years the girls and women presented as models of strength were more the endurers. The widow who stayed a widow for 50 years. The young girl who endured being a victim. What we are seeing now is that we?re valuing enacting. We are valuing positive strength.'

A year after her keynote, at a leadership conference called by then-APA president Dorothy W. Cantor, PsyD, Johnson raised the issue again, even suggesting that APA study adolescent girls and current research in the area. Cantor later created the task force as a presidential initiative. Its official mission is to raise public and professional consciousness regarding adolescent girls and to identify strengths, challenges and choices facing those girls today.

'Here we were, struggling to undo negative stereotypes and to focus on strengths of adolescent girls,' says Zager. 'This film was a golden opportunity.'

Those stereotypes by the way, are not just reflected in the media, says Johnson.

'One of the faults of research in the past,' she says, 'is that it?s taken findings from white girls, usually privileged white girls, and generalized them.'

The task force, she says, 'highly values diversity' and is researching the impact of stereotyping from the white culture on ethnic minority girls. It is also studying stereotyping as it relates to poor white girls.

At Kartemquin, Finitzo hopes her cameras will capture the same spirit of diversity.

Going against type

'We?ve done our interviews, looking for the girls in affluent areas and areas not so good,' she says. 'We will find girls not likely to get pregnant or drop out. We don?t want to focus on eating disorders. That?s not to say those issues won?t come up. But I think we will find girls who are willing to rebel against the messages they hear. We are hoping they will range in age from 11 to 16 and be very diverse.'

Finitzo?s film, tentatively titled 'Growing Up in America,' will be followed by an extensive educational outreach program, aimed at helping schools use the documentary as a tool.

'This film is going to be an interesting example of how psychology and film intersect,' says Finitzo. 'With the task force as our guide, we will make a film which is accurate in its portrayal of what girls experience.'