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Beacon Street Girls
Positive Preteen Role Models
By Kelly Burgess
Addie Schwartz calls it the "pornification" of society. She's talking about so-called "role models" like Paris Hilton and Britney Spears flaunting their party girl lifestyles; clothing styles more appropriate for a layout in a soft-porn men's magazine than the middle-school hallways; and messages on T-shirts that glorify the "mean girls" culture, saying things like "I had a nightmare I was a brunette."
These derogatory and sexually charged messages appall and worry many parents, but Schwartz put her dismay into action. She founded the company B*tween Productions Inc., a consumer/entertainment brand committed to the health and well-being of girls ages 9 to 13. The flagship product is the Beacon Street Girls book series, featuring five girls from disparate backgrounds who navigate the sometimes difficult world of middle school with humor and humanity.
The Beacon Street Girls were born when Schwartz's oldest daughter was 9 and began growing out of dolls and other toys targeted to very young girls. Unfortunately, as Schwartz soon discovered, there wasn't really much available for girls in the "tween" age group that she felt was appropriate to their stage of development. Schwartz figured she couldn't be the only mother in the world worried about the messages being sent to preteen girls by the heavy press given to Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan and Jessica Simpson.
"It's not even just the starlets that are everywhere; it's the ads as well," says Schwartz. "It's gotten to a point where these sexual images have subtly infiltrated every aspect of our lives. I hear all the time from other parents that they feel like girls are under siege from advertisers who want them to go directly from 9 to 19. This is particularly detrimental at this transitional state when their bodies are changing and they're just learning their strengths and weaknesses."
And it's not just television and other electronic and print media. Many fiction books aimed at that age group are often filled with sexual and other mature themes that preteens may not be ready for. Schwartz, who has an MBA from the Kellogg School at Northwestern University, decided to start by addressing that particular market. Using seed money from the successful sale of her software business, she gathered a staff of savvy businesswomen, and they gave birth to the Beacon Street Girls: Charlotte, Maeve, Avery, Isabel and Katani.