 And I want to say to you all what an amazing audience and how glad I am to be here. At the Representation Project, we do a lot of work with quote unquote media. And that often means Hollywood. And to be in a space where we're talking about books, my first love just feels really different and really positive. And like there's so much change that's accessible and possible in a way that isn't always when we talk more multimillion dollar projects to get one movie made. And so what I want to do a little bit is talk to you all about the movement that's happening around gender equality and throwing down and getting rid of those limiting stereotypes that hold us all back regardless of our gender identities. And why I think that's important is I'm going to talk about sort of the power that we each have and how we can use it. But I want to also say that you need friends, we need each other, we need to be in community to create change. And it's really important and I think one of the great things that books do and can do and I've heard this theme a lot today is books can show you how you're not alone. And I think that feeling of community and being able to stand together can make just such a big difference in terms of your ability to be brave and to be courageous and to stand for the things that you know are right. And so I'm going to talk a little bit about those things and I want to start off with just a quick recap of what the representation project does. You can see our film posters for misrepresentation and the mask you live in. And Eric did a great job of explaining what those films are and I do encourage you to check them out on Canopy or on Netflix. One of the things I would say is we see film as a transformational experience in the same way that a good book can be where you realize something that you didn't know was true in the past. And with both misrepresentation and the mask you live in, what we're trying to unveil and what our CEO and founder Jennifer Siebel Newsom is trying to unveil is that gender stereotypes, the gender binary hurts all of us. We are all suffering from it. We have all been infected by it. None of us are free from it. And we all also have a role in pushing back on it and saying these boxes do not define me. And we all have a stake in it. And what I get to do as director of communications is take that energy of when people realize that gender does indeed affect them and that the messages that we're receiving from media and other places are limiting and they wanna do something about it. That's where I come in and I try to host a national conversation around how do we do that? How do we change this culture? Host that national conversation and then engage folks to take action. We talk a lot about where are the places in our culture where we can lessen the drumbeat? Whether it's its frequency or its volume and say how can we make this message less omnipresent? How can we make it less powerful so that we all have more room to maneuver and to feel free and to feel supported? And I think one of the things that's really exciting for me in being here is you all have such a unique opportunity to do that as children's librarians and to create that space and that movement and that safe space. And so it's really exciting. And so that's me. The other thing that's of note of me is that I'm a new mom. My daughter's a year and a half. And embarking on that journey and figuring out how to bring that activism home and to be part of this community and the San Francisco community has been just so, so inspiring. This isn't DC. I saw you asking. So I wanna start off a little bit with the state of the movement and where we are. And I have a video to show because I do media, so let's listen in. We're in this moment and what the video shows and where it ends on is let's 2018 be the year we speak truth to power. And what I find so powerful about that is I've been working in gender equality now, the gender rights movement for over a decade and for a long time, it's felt like we've been competing. And especially I would say under the Obama administration we were all competing to be the favorite child. We were like, who can be the best? Let's see who can get the most money. Let's see who can have the highest profile. And it's not so much that way anymore. We've kind of said, oh, we have a different level of work to do now and we have to work together. And I think what you saw last year with me too and are seeing now with time's up is that there's a level of tolerance for the status quo has dipped. We're tired of it and not just women, not just the LGBTQ movement, but sort of we've come together and said, listen, these hierarchies, these structures of oppression are not going to stand anymore and we're going to work together until we overthrow them. And that there's this real opportunity for that because people are engaged, wide swatches of people are engaged who weren't before. And there's a power to that narrative and one of the things we have to do and I've heard echoed on this stage is lift up those voices who have been speaking about this for a long time. You saw Tarana Burke, the founder of Me Too in this video because she's been working on it for a long time and now is the moment to shine and to push through. And so how can we do that and how can we make sure that this moment that we have where we can have institutes like this and come together is not a moment but is lasting, sustainable change. And the answer is that we use our power and that each of us has power. And I'm gonna talk about three specific types of power that you can go out of this room and use. You can maybe start using it in this room as well. And those are relational power, consumer power and positional power. So relational power is probably the hardest one to use. This is when you are with your friends or your family and it's Thanksgiving and somebody misgender, mispronounce somebody and you need to correct them. And it's scary and it's really hard. It's when you hear something that's racist and you have to decide if you're gonna confront the person and what I think is really important about relational power is that when you're using it with the people who you love and care about, you have this opportunity to correct them. You are the person at the moment who can do that. And for the kids who come to your libraries, they might not have that power yet. They're gonna grow into it. But as grownups and as advocates and as allies and as members of these communities, this is how change actually happens. We have to push for it and we have to go to those uncomfortable spaces and have those uncomfortable conversations and start them with the love and caring we have for the people in our lives because otherwise nothing is gonna change. We have to use our basic relational human capital to push for change. You have to go into those uncomfortable spaces and you have to do it when you feel safe. If there's a time where you're feeling actually physically in danger, it's okay to step back. It's not every single time but I encourage you to just try to do it a little bit more often because it can really make a difference in that sort of day-to-day culture and those microaggressions that we learned about earlier. It's important, it's hard, it's scary. But I also wanna say that sort of look around this room the people who showed up today for this and think about this community that has your back and the folks who do support you even if you can't get support in the room. The other thing I would say about relational power is sometimes you don't know if you make any difference. Like you say something and then it's like, man I just took this big risk. I may be endangered a relationship I really care about. I got really uncomfortable. The person I was talking to got uncomfortable and probably you might think nothing is gonna happen. But it's been my experience at the representation project that that's not true. That sometimes those conversations, maybe nothing happens immediately but people think about them. They go home and they ruminate on them and they can act differently the next time. We see that when people see our films. People will see the mask you live in and men will come up to us and say, I'm gonna go home and tell my kid I love him. And I have never said that before. And so those little experiences, those little conversations whether it's seeing a movie or talking to someone who you know personally can just make a big difference. So I encourage you all to try to do it just a little bit, just a little bit more. The next one I wanna talk about is consumer power. This is the stuff that I do all day. And I really feel like we're in this golden age and the research actually backs it up of consumer activism. So we're Americans and as Americans we often define freedom by what you can buy. And you see that even in the children's books, right? Like William wants a doll, what's that about? It's about being able to buy something. But being able to buy something that reflects your identity. And so that means that we as Americans are really primed to use our dollars as our freedom of speech, as our expression. And that means both when we spend them, how we spend them and how we don't spend them. So one of the things we do with the representation project is we run a campaign called Not Buying It and Media We Like. And we organize around it and we say, how can we tell companies that they have to live by our values if they want our dollars? And so one of the big ways we've done that is we organize every year at the Super Bowl. And we have been doing it for a while now and we've just seen a tremendous change. Where it used to be that Super Bowl ads were like this for the Carl's Jr. It used to be all women is either objects, women in bikinis, half naked, bouncing around, or women as buzz kills. Women who wanted you to do chores when you were just trying to watch the game with your bros, yo, you know? And those ads now are extreme outliers. Now the ads you see on the Super Bowl, who's by the way half the audience is women, are much more about celebrating a diversity of human experience and about breaking out of boxes. And what that does is it may seem like a small change and I don't know, maybe none of you watched the Super Bowl here, but a lot of people do. And it's an opportunity where people watching it and especially young people watching it get ideas about how to be in this world, right? A lot of media tells us stories about how to be. So how can we change those limiting messages and make those messages be more what we want, how it reflects our values, allow people more freedom so that they can live their full human potential. And one of those ways is by talking back to advertisers. And in particular with social media, you have this opportunity to immediately get at a company's reputation and companies really care about their online reputation. And by just sending out a couple of messages, asking your friends to do the same, maybe getting some influencers to do that, you can make a big difference. We were tweeting at GoDaddy back in the day and they had a Super Bowl ad that was, as you may remember, their old campaign all about sexy ladies. I don't really know what that has to do with web hosting but that was their plan. It doesn't really have to do with hamburgers either, let's be honest, not related. And they tweeted back to us and they said they read every single one of their tweets and they changed their strategy. Their ad campaigns aren't like that anymore. This can have real strong results. So we do it at the Super Bowl because we know that that's advertising's biggest night. But we also do it all year round because that's not the only time we see it. And we look for advertising and merchandising that is sending a limiting message and we push back on it. And we're not the only ones, lots of people do this. And so we can join that chorus that causes companies to change. And so these are some of the examples. We worked on this Bud Light label that said the beer for removing no from your vocabulary for the night. Yeah, they pulled it. They pulled it after our campaign. Crazy that it ever ran but they pulled it. We worked on Breitbart trying to get Amazon to stop advertising. They still do, by the way, Advertises on Hate Speech website, Breitbart. We worked to get this billboard pulled down by X-Men. And we did. It was a big billboard out in LA. We got it pulled down. And then this one might be of interest to you, this last one. It was a book by Scholastic about Thomas Jefferson's slaves, specifically his cook and his daughter. George Washington. Oh man, look at this audience. Knows what they're talking about. Yeah, and the problems these slaves encountered in the book were that they couldn't find flour. There was nothing about, I don't know, being slaves and the feeling of that and the horror of it. And Scholastic pulled it. They pulled the book. And so doing this sort of consumer activism, it adds up. It can make a big change. And so we do it for just sort of these broad companies but one of the big places we look at is Hollywood. And one of the big problems we see with Hollywood is that white cisgender straight men are overrepresented to a crazy degree. And in terms of the stories that so many people consume, we're getting a really limited viewpoint. And this is some research out of USC Annenberg that Stacey Smith pulls together and you can see that directors are largely male, they're largely white and that is not reflective of our populace and what that does as for consumers and for people who like movies is the stories get boring. That's why we're hearing the same things over and over again is because we're not drawing on the vast majority of our populace who have amazing voices to tell. And so we push back on that as well. And one of the things we identify and we talk a lot about in misrepresentation about why this is is because we have this myth in our culture that what is important if you identify as a woman where your value lies is in your youth, your beauty and your sexuality. And it doesn't sort of matter what else do you accomplish or what else you do that you could always be reduced down to that. And you see that in our discussions around politics. Just think about all the comments on what Hillary looked like as she was trying to run for office like that had anything to do with her qualifications. And one place that we see it also is on the red carpet. And so in some ways, like the red carpet, fancy dresses, who cares, privileged women, whatever, right, but in another place, here are these women who are artists. They're theoretically being honored for being at the height of artistic achievement by their peers. And the only thing we can talk about is what they look like. Did they dye it? What's their manicure like? How long did it take to get ready? And this sends a bad message to the little boys and little girls who are watching those shows. It tells them that women are objects, that that's what you can aspire to. You can aspire to being beautiful, but maybe not so much about having ideas. And you can treat women as objects, and that that's normal. But of course, we know that this isn't right. And so several years ago, we organized this Ask Her More campaign, and we said, there's nothing wrong with liking fashion. We don't want women to be punished for liking things that are quote unquote feminine, and we don't want people of any gender to be punished for liking things that are quote unquote feminine, but that there's more to women than what we look like. And we organized and we got other people involved, other nonprofits, Amy Poehler smart girls, we got celebrities, and there was this huge outpouring of like, here are the questions we actually wanna hear from women on the red carpet, because they have brains and they're artists and they're creatives, and we saw a sea change. And I have a video, hopefully there'll be less problems this time, to show you what that changed look like from that old script that we had. Hashtag Ask Her More. This is a movement to, you know, say we're more than just our dresses. It's great, the dresses are beautiful. We love the artists that make all these clothes, but it's hard being a woman in Hollywood or in any industry. So it's exciting for me to get to talk to other nominees about all the hard work they did. I will say, I enjoy being asked about my craft, my profession. Fashion is something that I think of as an extra curricular interest. She suffered from depression. How did you find the balance in this role? I was watching or listening to something where they actually, they compared you and your work to Meryl Streep. What's your reaction to something like that? I'd love to know what you're working on now, what's next? Have you heard from families who are saying, hey, thank you. Any advice for your husband? Her More, hashtag is trending, where they're saying, talk to women about more than fashion, talk to them about their charities, their movies, their work. What do you think of that? I think it's really important, I mean, I've tried to be, you know, an activist. All of us have. It's great to kind of highlight the fact that women are multifaceted, that we can talk about the world as much as we can talk about our gowns. Much more substantive stuff on the red carpet, we're talking about sexual assault and we're talking about the gender gap behind the camera. And we really are just so excited that we've been able to move so far, so quickly. And I think that's the power of this moment and why, you know, we're working together to create and change this sort of media. And I would say, you know, we're all consumers and whether it's of, you know, the stuff coming out of Hollywood or on your TV or, you know, what you buy at the toy aisle, you know, what you're getting for your libraries, there's a choice there that you can make. You can make it both in how you spend your dollars and also in how you don't spend your dollars. And there's a ways that we know that the market speaks and that we can continue to push. So the third type of power is institutional power, is positional power. And this is about using where you're situated in society to help affect change. And one of the easy ones to talk about is if you're a citizen and you can vote, please vote to register if you haven't registered yet. Vote, vote. This is a picture of the first ever Latina senator of the United States. Yeah, she was elected about a year and a half ago. As a Latina, that makes me so mad. Really, we have never had representation before in the Senate? Never. It's nuts. And nuts, it makes my blood boil. And I know I'm not the only one and we're not the only group who hasn't been represented and we've seen change, right? We saw amazing trans folks get elected. We've seen this change, but it only happens when we vote, when we go out and take the time and make the difference and drive our friends to the polling place and make a plan ahead of time. And so citizen power is extremely important and something that we all need to use and flex that muscle even when it's not a presidential election, even when maybe it's not the midterms, sort of every time you get the opportunity to vote, I urge you to please do it. You're filling the pipeline and it's so important. And then the other institutions we're a part of are professional institutions, your role as librarians. I talk to a bunch of different audiences and sometimes when we talk about professional pieces, they're not exactly as sure on how to use their professional power. But we're all part of organizations and so whether it's looking at the policies in place at your organization around, say, paid leave or even looking at your job ads to make sure that the language is inclusive, that that can be really important. But of course, as children librarians, you here have just such a unique opportunity to advance change as professionals. And I've just heard so many amazing strategies about that, about book selection and creating a welcoming environment. And I'm just so excited to be here with this group as you figure out how to create an environment that sets people free from the gender binary, from the box. So that people can feel strong and supported and who they are. I sometimes tell a story about myself, which is about how I came to this work and how I became an activist. And what I say is that I grew up in an activist family, an amazing family. My parents are so supportive and we're still really close. They're not perfect, but they're pretty great. And I knew that I could be or do or whatever I wanted and that I was free to be myself. But I knew that that wasn't always the case for everybody else. And I knew that in part because my grandparents were different and my parents had grown up differently. My mom, when she was growing up, she grew up in a conservative household in a different generation. And when I would go and visit my grandparents, I would get some of those same messages from them. And I remember my grandmother telling me not to act smart around boys because they wouldn't like me. And I just threw that out because I knew that I would go home to my parents and that they didn't believe that and I didn't believe that and I had that freedom. But I also knew that my mom had grown up there and that she couldn't just throw that out. She had to negotiate it in a different way. Now my mom, she's a professor of women's history. Like she's a bad ass lady. She became a professor when nobody, no women were professors. And my dad, he's a Chicano-American historian and he became a professor before Chicanos became professors. Like they're both amazing trailblazers but they both had to put up with a lot of stuff that I knew I didn't have to put up with. My mom, when she told her parents that she wanted to go to graduate school, her mom told her, why you'll just end up marrying an absent-minded professor. Not that she would become one but the danger was she would marry one. And my grandfather, her father said, why do you want balls? Why aren't ovaries enough for you? But she did it and they just ended up supporting her and they love us and they support us still. And so I knew from my family and from growing up that not everybody had that safe space but that I had it in my family. And so I see that as an enormous privilege that I know not everybody has. My parents didn't have it. My friends, some of them didn't have it growing up and my house was the house that everybody came over to when we had dinner and it was maybe a little scary for some of my friends to engage in those conversations around the dinner table because that's not what they were used to. And I see that as my work now as extending that circle of safety so that more people when they join my community have that safety to be who they are and to throw out those messages that they know are untrue and are damaging and are limiting. And I was a reader growing up and I think of the library can be one of those same places and the way that my home was nurturing to me, the library can be nurturing to kids who either have that or don't have that at home. And it is so pivotal to have that strength. And I heard that on one of the panels talking about how just having a little bit of love, a little bit of care, a little bit of acceptance can go so far. And that's why I just, I'm so excited to be here and to be talking to this room and think about how you all are living that mission. And I hope that you leave here feeling energized and excited and armed with the tools you need to go out and create that and expand that circle of safety for the kids in your community. So before I close, I have two more things to say. One is about men, about white men, about cis men. They're not the problem. They're overrepresented, yes. We hear their voices a lot, but we need them. And our society puts them in a box too. They do send them really limiting messages. And those messages are damaging to them. Yes, they get a position of power, but they also don't have access to their full humanity. And so I invite us to reach out with care and compassion and try to reach people where they are and to not expect anyone to be perfect. If the bar for our movement is perfection, then none of us will be a part of it. And so instead it has to be about each of us trying to be better, trying to be trying to learn, going to the uncomfortable place and trying to grow from it. And so I hope that we have an opportunity to do more and to do better and to encouragement, to join and stand with us. And the other reason why they're really important is because they still hold the positions of power in most places. Women only make up 20% of government, of entertainment and business. It's even worse. And that's like cis white women. It's not queer folks. It's not people of color where we need them. We need their power and their access. And so figuring out how to do that is really important. And if you're struggling with some of that empathy, I really do invite you to watch The Mask You Live In because it can help arm you with that language on how to bridge that divide and how to talk about gender in a way that includes men. A lot of times and a lot of men as well hear gender and think women and girls or maybe they think LGBTQ. But generally that doesn't apply to me. And that's not the case. And so we need to expand, expand that. And so one of the ways that we do that at the representation project is obviously through our films. But we also have what we call our pledge which you can find on our website. And what happens when you take the pledge is that you get a weekly email from Jennifer Siebel Nussan with something specific. You can do that week to help move the needle on gender equality. Then there are all sorts of different things. Sometimes they're tweeting the red carpet with us. Sometimes they're using a resource from GLAAD to talk to the young people in your life about what's going on in the news. Sometimes they're to donate, say to our Kickstarter. But it is something really specific. And so I invite you to check us out. And I have one more video that I think nicely sums up the work of the representation project and I think also serves as a call to action that I'm going to show before taking questions. Here we go. So that's what I get to do. That's what I get to work on. It's a huge privilege. And one of the things I would say is that we talk about a boy or a girl and we work a lot in media representation. I would love to be able to critique media for gender non-conforming folks, but there's almost no representation in mainstream media. So we can't even include them in our roundup and it contributes to that erasure. And so it's been really refreshing to be here and talking about publishing and books and sort of see those different narratives and that there are places where you can consume that type of media and see yourself reflected. And as a reader, I'm inspired by it and inspired by the ability of books to change our culture and change our world and change our feelings of acceptance of ourselves. So I invite you to join the representation project and I applaud your work and I want to know if anybody has any questions.