According to Esther Drill, webmaster for the webzine
gURL, the website takes "a different
approach to being a teenage girl than what you already see." Indeed, gURL
has become an influential website whose articles have transcended the
typical content of teen magazines and websites to include features on
depression, divorce, body image, and friendships between girls. The
features within the webzine challenges the expectations of such a
publication, encouraging their readership to question traditional images
of femininity. Observes co-editor Rebecca Odes, "We wanted to take
things that are force-fed to girls of that age and make them see that wow,
(matters of substance) are obviously of concern to people (in their
teens), and nothing can be done to change that. ... The whole perscriptive
attitudes of mainstream magazines is not necessary for you to find a place
for yourself within these topics. (We) just try to provide a way of
looking at it from another side, which is not like 'follow this recipe and
you will be an effective girl'."
Esther and Rebecca founded gURL in 1996, as students at NYU's
School of New Media. The pair had known each other throughout childhood,
and "we talked about (forming a magazine) a lot while we were growing up,
and then we were both coming into this new program and thought maybe this
being the new medium might be a good place to do a new project." Rebecca
observes. "There's a freedom to the newness of this medium, which was
nice. Also, we wanted to give girls a reason to use technology, which is a
real concern for us. We have different relationships to technology, too -
I grew up completely uninterested in math or science or technology
altogether, and Esther was more focused on that stuff. But we both agreed
that, in order for girls to be interested in it, there has to be something
that talks to them directly."
"Interests them," emphasizes Esther, "because I liked video games
when I was growing up, and I was kind of rare. Boys love video games, and
at a young age it gives them an interest in getting inside things and
understanding how they work. Girls, it seemed to us, didn't have that
motivation - I like the stuff, but I don't like those games where people
are killing each other. There have to be alternatives that are interesting
and give girls impetus to say, 'how does this work, and what is
interesting about this?' So that's one of those things that we are really
interested in."
Getting girls into using technology for their own devices is a
cornerstone of gURL. Unfortunately, other webmasters' feelings about girls
in a multimedia forum seem based in age-old stereotypes. Pattie Maes, who
founded the Firefly web resource for
arts and entertainment, was quoted as saying that girls should get
involved with computer sciences and the internet because it offers a good
outlet for communication, as opposed to exploring other things they can do
with computer science. However, the girls behind gURL feel that the
potential for communication would help young women develop an interest in
technology.
"I think that communication is the killer app for girls," says
Rebecca. "We've seen that in the community - that's just what girls want.
We started it because they were just begging to communicate with one
another. Whether that's just the way women are made or whatever that is, I
think that there's something about communicating that's important for us."
"When you're talking about ways to get girls interested in
technology," adds Esther, "I think communication is a fabulous way to get
girls interested in technology, and I think computer media to
communication as a focus of study is a great idea, but I don't know that
they're gonna be able to make the transition between computer media to
communication to computer science. If we bring girls into technology
because they're interested in communicating and they become fascinated
with the metod they're communicating through that they want to get down to
the nuts and bolts, that's great, but I don't know how realistic that is."
If nothing else, gURL has succeeded in getting girls to want to
take part in the new media. The site has received thousands of hits as a
result of getting favorably reviewed in such diverse venues as Spin,
Seventeen, and erotica zine Pucker Up, and some of the girls who have
visited the site have felt inspired to attend the School for New Media or
inquire about internships at gURL. The site itself lives up to the hype,
with an inviting air provided by cute, hand-drawn graphics and a
first-person perspective on problems and situations that occur in a girl's
adolescence. This writer, for one, wishes Esther and Rebecca were around
when she was a kid.
However, the gURL crew have done more than just provide a place
where girls can play on the net. gURL is also a place where girls can
feel safe from being harassed by hormonal boys. "Girls come on our chat
and say, 'great! this is great, because we don't have boys harrassing
us,'" observes Esther, "but to them it's just like, if you go into a chat
room...and it's not our chat room and designed to be a girls-only space,
you find boys who want to cyber and you get irritated with them or you
ignore them or whatever you do - it's just part of being a girl, in a way.
I guess it's real bad, but in a way if you make it, 'oh, girls aren't
safe,' then you're just infantilizing them."
Unfortunately, many media outlets have insisted on taking this tack
of infantilization and, in writing about safety online, have portrayed
women as victims. Those outlets have included, surprisingly, feminst
periodical Ms., which started out their "techno.fem" series with a
maddening article on women's safety online. The article's theory that the internet is no place for women
hinged on the writer's visit to an AOL sex chatroom and included some choice quotes from anti-porn,
anti-sex feminist Catharine MacKinnon.
"So should we lock up everyone else? And tell them they can't?"
fumes Esther. "It's real life, certainly, it's real-life issues, and
certainly in that case where that guy tortured that girl [he met in a chat
room], that's horrible, but the idea is that you don't get involved with
anyone you don't know, don't meet them. There's certain safety things we
have up on our site, like what we have on the email list. Before you join
the email list, we're like, "use common sense, don't give out your real
name, don't do this and don't do this.' Use your head, basically."
In addition to advocating internet safety for girls, gURL also
helps girls meet friends on the internet through a webpage devoted to
penpals. "It's called gURL 2 gURL. You join and then you fill out a little
page about yourself, and then we have it broken up with high school girls
and junior girls and older girls, and you can search through it. Each girl
has picked a background colour for their page and a little icon, and you
can click on her little icon and go to her page, and stuff, so that they
can get penpals. Apparently, from the letters we get it's really active -
girls are saying, 'thanks a lot, I made five of my best cyberpals on
gURL.'"
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