Lyn Mikel Brown is an American academic, author, feminist, and community activist. She is Professor of Education and Director of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Colby College in Waterville, Maine. Her research interests include girl development, youth activism, and sexualization and objectification of girls by the media and marketers. She is a co-founder of the Hardy Girls Healthy Women research organization and the SPARK activist movement against the sexualization of girls ages 13 to 22 in the media. She has authored five books and many peer-reviewed articles, general media articles, and book chapters. She was inducted into the Maine Women's Hall of Fame in 2013.
In 1991 Brown joined the faculty of Colby College as assistant professorof education and human development. She was promoted to associate professor in 1998 and to full professor in 2005. In 2000 she co-founded Hardy Girls Healthy Women, a nonprofit research foundation. Through the HGHW Girls' Advisory Board, she initiated the online teen blog and youth activism website, . In 2010 she co-founded, with Deborah Tolman, the SPARK activist movement against the sexualization and objectification of girls aged 13–22 in the media. Among the latter group's efforts was a 2012 Change.org petition against Lego Friends for targeting girls with a new line of skinny, buxom female characters.
Writing
Brown's first book, co-authored with Carol Gilligan, was Meeting at the Crossroads: Women's psychology and girls' development, which focused attention on a previously little-studied stage of female development, the transition from girlhood to adolescence, and introduced the "Listener's Guide" as a research tool. The book was named one of the New York Times Notable Books of the Year. For her 2003 book, Girlfighting: Betrayal and rejection among girls, Brown interviewed more than 400 girls in grades 1 through 12 to explore the hypothesis that gossiping, backstabbing, and cliquishness stem from pressure to live up to society's idea of the perfect female. She co-authored, with Sharon Lamb, a pair of books on the sexualization of teens in the media and marketing, Packaging Girlhood: Rescuing our daughters from marketers' schemes and Packaging Boyhood: Saving our sons from superheroes, slackers, and other media stereotypes ; her partner, Mark Tappan, was a co-author on the latter book. She has co-authored seven curricula, including From Adversaries to Allies, currently in its third edition, which have been used in more than 100 girls' empowerment groups statewide and in 41 U.S. states. She has also written many peer-reviewed articles, general media articles, and book chapters.
Other activities
Brown is a member of the National Women's Studies Association, the National Association for Media Literacy Education, and the Association for Women in Psychology. She is a member of the board of Hardy Girls Healthy Women and the executive committee of the Waterville Inclusive Community Project. She is engaged in the trauma informed rural education redesign research-practice partnership known as Transforming Rural Experience in Education. She is a co-facilitator of the Waterville High School Gay, Straight, Trans Alliance. She has served as a member of the American Psychological Association Presidential Task Force on Adolescent Girls and as a consultant to the Ms. Foundation for Women's National Girls' Initiative in 1994. She has also been a consultant for numerous media and film projects.
Awards and honors
In 2006 she was a co-winner, with Lauren Sterling, of the Groundbreaking Activist Leader Award from the Maine International Film Festival, for co-producing a documentary on the playUgly Ducklings, which addresses homophobia and youth suicide. She was named College Professor of the Year by the Academy of Education Arts and Sciences International in 2014. She was inducted into the Maine Women's Hall of Fame in 2013.
Personal life
Brown and her partner, Mark Tappan, also a professor of education at Colby College, have one daughter and reside in Waterville. In 2012 their then-seventeen-year-old daughter Maya, a blogger for SPARK, was one of three girls interviewed by Katie Couric on the Katie show about their objections to the way the media portrays teen girls.
