The Dressing Room Project Blog

Web Site Revision!

2011-02-23T15:38:00.000-08:00

We've just completed a major revision of thedressingroomproject.org
Check it out!

As we now have a Facebook page for updates, and will be posting on our newly revised web site via the "What's New" section, we will probably not be doing much here on blogger any more.

See you in cyberspace!

In Sisterhood,
*Mimi Kates
Director EWP & The Dressing Room Project

Help Teen Achieve Recovery

2011-02-01T12:01:00.000-08:00

National Eating Disorders Awareness Week is February 20^th- 26^th.This year we are fund raising to help a teenager in need of eating disorders treatment.

To Donate Click Here.

“Over 11 million people in the US suffer from an eating disorder,” reports The National Eating Disorders Association. “In spite of the unprecedented growth of these disorders in the past two decades, insurance coverage for treatment is inadequate.”

Jennifer (pseudonym used for anonymity) is a 17 year old high school senior with bulimia nervosa. She has struggled with the disease for over two years. She reached out to The Dressing Room Project for help.

Residential mental health treatment is not covered by Jennifer’s insurance, yet she does not qualify for hospital treatment either due to her supposed "healthy" weight. People with bulimia are often of a deceptively normal looking weight, but the disease is potentially life threatening due to electrolyte imbalance which affects the heart and other major organs.

"Eating disorders have a 20% death rate, the highest of any mental disorder," says Michelle Villanti, L.C.S.W., Clinical Director of the Nova Luna Center for Eating Disorders. "One out of five people who have an eating disorder will die from it.”

Ironically, insurance will not pay for Jennifer’s treatment unless her situation becomes medically critical. She realizes that she needs to receive treatment before her disease progresses to the point where hospitalization is required. “This is upsetting because I don't want my disorder to get to that point,” says Jennifer.

Jennifer’s residential treatment will cost a hefty $45,000.

Shocked that their insurance will not help, Jennifer's mom said, “Of course we will do everything we can. You can’t put a price on your child’s life.”

Jennifer told us, “Anything you can do to help me fulfill my dream of recovery would be greatly appreciated. God bless you for everything you do to help promote a healthy body image for young girls. You truly make a difference.”

Tax deductible contributions may be donated at http://www.TheDressingRoomProject.org/donate.html or sent via postal mail to: EWP & The Dressing Room Project, PO Box 834 Black Mountain, NC 28711. Checks should be written to “Catalyst/EWP.”

Half of all donations received from now through the end of February will go to “Jennifer’s Fund for Recovery.” The balance will support ongoing eating disorders prevention work.

Please help us make this a successful fund raising campaign!

"Like" our Jennifer's Fund FaceBook page and share with friends.

Donate if you can. Even a small amount makes a difference.

Thanks for caring.

In Sisterhood,

*Mimi Kates

Director EWP & The Dressing Room Project

Eating Disorders Awareness Week

2011-01-03T17:36:00.000-08:00

The Dressing Room Project is honored to be invited by NEDA as a partner organization for National Eating Disorders Awareness Week this year. Please check out their information below.

It’s Time to Talk about It during National Eating Disorders Awareness Week, February 20-26, 2011. Join the nation’s largest eating disorders outreach effort by committing to do just one thing to start the conversation in your community. NEDA provides tons of free and discount resources, fun activity ideas and much more! Click here to learn more about how you can make a difference.

In Sisterhood,
*Mimi Kates
Director EWP & The Dressing Room Project

Goodshop For Us!

2010-12-06T19:21:00.000-08:00

Doing your holiday shopping online? Please consider using Goodshop.com

Just select Emerging Women Projects as your charity and when you go to any of the hundreds of participating stores from there, they donate a percentage of your purchase price to us.

Amazon, Ebay, Bed Bath & Beyond, Apple, Best Buy, Gap, even FTD florists!

With a couple extra clicks you can do a lot of good. There's also an option to download the GoodSearch toolbar so that whenever you go to a participating store, it remembers you (& us)

Enjoy your holidays. Be safe, well and happy!

In Sisterhood,
*Mimi Kates
Director EWP & The Dressing Room Project

You Asked For It!

2010-11-02T17:00:00.000-07:00

Many of you have requested access to more card designs so you don't need to wait for the New Free Cards to be posted on our site.

Thank you for your patience! Now you can order a data cd with 60 card designs ready to print at our special DRP Card Store. (not at the main Dressing Room Project Store)

Hopefully this new option will help get more cards out there where they can be seen and appreciated.

In Sisterhood,

*Mimi Kates
Director EWP & The Dressing Room Project

Technical Difficulties...

2010-10-09T16:22:00.000-07:00

We apologize for any recent difficulties with the Action Team Registration process on our web site.

Our Web Mistress is doing an overhaul and we'll update you when we've got the bugs worked out! Please do email us at ewp@vtlink.net if you notice any other problems with the site.

In the meantime, please enjoy the Free Cards and The Dressing Room Project Store for t-shirts, mugs, bags and much more. (My personal favorite is the "You're Overflowing With Beauty" Baby Bib... couldn't resist the pun!) If you do decide to buy something, first get the current Discount Coupon Codes. (usually 5%-20% off.)

Be Well.

In Sisterhood,

*Mimi Kates
Director EWP & The Dressing Room Project

September Cards Are Here

2010-09-14T15:12:00.000-07:00

New Free Cards are available to print and post.

Go ahead... Make the world a more beautiful place with Dressing Room Project Cards!

In Sisterhood,

*Mimi Kates
Director EWP & The Dressing Room Project

New Cards!

2010-04-12T14:14:00.000-07:00

New Free Cards are now available for you to print & post.
Happy Spring!

In Sisterhood,

*Mimi Kates
Director EWP & The Dressing Room Project

We're Featured on Dragonfly Designs!

2010-01-08T13:43:00.000-08:00

Dragonfly Designs, a socially responsible handmade jewelry company, has chosen The Dressing Room Project as their featured non profit for January 2010.

This is great for us... & for YOU!

EWP & The Dressing Room Project will receive 10% of January online jewelry sales.

As an extra bonus they are offering our friends 25% off all online jewelry purchases at Dragonfly Designs in January. Just use this promotional code: drp25

They've got some beautiful and unusual pieces.

I may do a little shopping myself...

Stay warm & healthy.

In Sisterhood,
*Mimi Kates
Director EWP & The Dressing Room Project

Link To Us!

2009-12-15T13:09:00.000-08:00

You can now link to TheDressingRoomProject.org with our banner page.

It's easy to add us to your web site or blog and spread the word.
We really appreciate it and so will the women and girls you help to discover us!

In Sisterhood,
*Mimi Kates
Director EWP & The Dressing Room Project

Royalty & The Dressing Room Project

2009-10-29T11:30:00.000-07:00

We're excited to learn that Tiffany Gunderson, the newly crowned Miss North Metro in Minneapolis will be helping promote The Dressing Room Project in her travels.

Tiffany says, "I will spend my year promoting self-esteem and real beauty in young girls, speaking to classrooms and different organizations about issues pertaining to my platform. It will be so great to have The Dressing Room Project as a resource! What a great organization!"

We're happy to have you on board, Tiffany. Thanks.

Our New Free Cards for October are ready! Come & get 'em.

I liked Lynn's idea (from a comment on my last post) of leaving her waitress a DRP Card with the tip. Some of us were slipping Cards into fashion mags and tabloids at the grocery checkout for a while... If anyone else has a creative suggestion please feel free to comment and let us all know!

In Sisterhood,
*Mimi Kates
Director EWP & The Dressing Room Project

Little Things...

2009-09-25T11:05:00.000-07:00

The other day I came back to my parked car and found a note on the windshield tucked under my wiper blade: “Hello Stranger!”, it said, “Thank you for your bumper sticker (size of your heart) It hit me just when I needed it!”

Sometimes we forget that the little things we do can really make a big difference. So keep posting those Dressing Room Project Cards!

We are excited this month to announce the registration of our 200th Dressing Room Project Action Team. Welcome to Kelsey in Ohio whose Team received a special gift box of Dressing Room Project goodies including a “Worry about the size of your heart, not the size of your body” t-shirt, buttons and more.

New Free Cards for September are now available on The Dressing Room Project web site. And check out the Special Offers page for T-shirts and buttons whose proceeds help support our work.

To Kelsey and everyone else out there participating in The Dressing Room Project, we want to say thank you for helping encourage women everywhere to see ourselves as unique beautiful individuals. Let’s focus on our strengths to do good in this world!

In Sisterhood,

*Mimi Kates
Director EWP & The Dressing Room Project

New Free Cards & More...

2009-08-28T10:24:00.000-07:00

Hi there. Wanted to let you know that New Cards for August are now available for free download on our web site.

In other news, we've updated our Action Teams Map. We're now just 2 Teams shy of 200!

One of our Teams in Canada created a very sweet video of the cards their girls made. Hopefully the Team Coordinator will allow us to post it here. If your Action Team has a video or other project you'd like to share, just email me at the address on the web site.

In Sisterhood,
*Mimi Kates
Director EWP & The Dressing Room Project

Ways to Make Your Action Team Fun

2009-07-29T16:23:00.000-07:00

Hi, everyone. My name is Danielle and I’ve been on the Advisory Board of EWP & The Dressing Room Project for a few years now. As an undergraduate at Manhattanville College, I decided to start my own Action Team in the fall of 2008.

Yet rather than having my teammates simply distributing The Dressing Room Project’s positive body image cards in local fitting rooms, I also wanted the group to be an official on-campus club where students could exchange creative thoughts, ideas and concerns about body image in the media and in the local community while having a good time and forgetting about work for a while.

A group of about 15 women, we convened twice a month—every other Tuesday evening—to work on creative projects in a nurturing, judgment-free environment. I would like to share with you a few of our activities. Try them in your own Action Teams!

Also, please feel free to comment and add suggestions for other DRP Action Team members.

Feel-good slumber parties. Invite Action Team members to a “treat your body right” night. Serve healthy snacks such as popcorn drizzled with agave nectar and cinnamon and good-for-you drinks such as orange-mango “mocktails.” Wrap your hair in towels and smear cold cream or mud masques on your face. Give each other manicures and pedicures. Let it all go and have a good time!

Magazine collages. Let’s face it: magazines with air-brushed supermodels on the covers can often make us feel bad about our own physiques. Yet sometimes you’ll find phrases and photos in magazines that can help you create a positive body image collage. A good example is L’Oreal’s “Because You’re Worth It.”

Be creative. Mount your collages on neon paper. With the permission of store managers/owners and school administration, post them along with your DRP body image cards. Be sure to always use environmentally-friendly tape that will not damage public property and put the Dressing Room Project URL (www.thedressingroomproject.org) on each collage you post so that people will remember the project. Who knows, maybe your efforts will motivate others to start an Action Team, too.

Celebrate “Love Your Body Day” on October 18 by screening films such as "Real Women Have Curves." If you have questions on getting permission to show the film to a large audience, we can help you get the information you need.

Get a group together and learn a fun physical activity such as a dance or exercise routine. Loving your body means taking good care of it. And that includes eating well and exercising!!

Strike up discussions or debates about body image in our society: media, music, and literature. Lauren Greenfield’s HBO documentary "Thin" is a good one to watch with a smaller group of people (this way, everyone gets a chance to give their own thoughts about the film).

Talk about eating disorders and what you can do to prevent them. Gather information from www.nationaleatingdisorders.org.

If you can think of any other ideas, please post them in the “comments” section. Let’s get a discussion going!

Be Well and Be Happy.

~Danielle

Welcome to The Dressing Room Project Blog!

2009-07-15T11:12:00.000-07:00

Hi there. This is Mimi Kates, creator of The Dressing Room Project.

Sometimes I am awed by how this movement has grown since I first hatched the idea and began taking social change action along with teenage girls in Vermont nearly a decade ago. (That's me, the third 'girl' from the right.)

If I had looked into a crystal ball back then and seen thousands of people printing out our positive body image cards and almost 200 Action Teams around the US, Canada, Europe and West Africa I’m sure I would have been more than a little surprised (and delighted!)

For those of you familiar with the project, this blog will be replacing the “What’s New!” section of our web site. If you’ve just discovered The Dressing Room Project, we’re glad you found us!

We’re excited to offer a place where you can share your ideas about promoting positive body image and living a healthy, happy life.

We’ll keep you updated about the project, special offers and when there are new FREE CARDS for you to download, print and post in women’s dressing rooms.

Welcome to the rebellion!

In Sisterhood,

*Mimi Kates
Director EWP & The Dressing Room Project