They call it the Kind Campaign. Dedicated to ending girl-on-girl crime Pepperdine seniors Lauren Parsekian and Molly Stroud are filming a documentary with a simple message: be nice to one another.
Our goal is not to make everybody best friends Parsekian said. We’re all different. But we’re not asking a lot. We’re not trying to solve poverty or world hunger. We only ask women to be kind to one another. It’s about respect.”
Girl-on-girl “crime according to Parsekian and Stroud, includes physical violence, name-calling, threats, power struggles, manipulation, hurtful secrets, disseminating rumors and exclusivity.
Parsekian and Stroud are in the final stage of non-profit status approval and are just going public on campus this month.
The Kind Campaign isn’t pointing fingers at anyone Parsekian said. We’ve all been talked about and we’ve all talked at one point.”
They are launching an interactive Web site this month where girls can ask or give advice in an anonymous setting. Parsekian and Stroud said they hope the Web site initiates a healing process that will replace the destructive cycles of girl cruelty.Parsekian said that although the Kind Campaign has only formally existed since the summer of 2008 the idea has been in the making for years.
In search of a cohesive storyline for the documentary next fall Parsekian Stroud and their mothers will embark on a journey across the country and through the hearts of women they encounter along the way. They will add this string of stories to the 15 hours of raw footage and interviews they already acquired since the summer of 2008.
As a television production major Parsekian spent her junior year interning under Pepperdine Professor of Screenwriting Tom Shadyac. At the end of the year Parsekian traveled with Shadyac and a team of interns to Telluride Colo. home of “Mountainhigh the annual documentary film festival.
Parsekian said she came home full of vision and new direction. She invited long-time friend Stroud, who had just returned from the summer program in London, to join her on the campaign. They aimed to shed light on the perils of middle school years, which for many young women are a jungle of physical and emotional roller coasters, complicated by the Mean Girls-esque” shark tank of catty-girl drama.
The two girls began work right away interviewing women of all ages over the last six months. From a six-year-old seated next to her on a plane Parsekian learned that cliques and cattiness are as dependable as after-lunch recess. Women in their 50s affirm that schoolgirl backstabbing is not outdated like a wrong-edition textbook – competition continues throughout adulthood.
Some of the most interesting interviews she said were with mothers whose daughters struggle to navigate the gauntlet of a middle-school hallway. A family’s happiness a mother observed is only as strong as its unhappiest child.
Parsekian and Stroud added that they believe pop culture has normalized the “Mean Girls” dynamic.
“No one sees it as a problem Stroud said. Conventional knowledge says ‘this is what happens’ but … girls should not be going through this.”
Parsekian and Stroud said that through the campaign they have seen girls who were formerly perpetrators of girl-on-girl “crime” express their regret.
As the Kind Campaign goes public on Pepperdine’s campus the girls hope the momentum will spread into a movement causing permanent change for generations to come across the nation. “This isn’t about the exploitation of anyone’s pain Parsekian said. This is a universal thing that every woman goes through. Each one of us deals with the same issues physically [and] emotionally.”