tru beu

street interviews

admin — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 23:56:39 +0000

We heard recently that more young women would rather be america’s next top model than win the nobel prize. We wanted to see how other people felt about that, so we hit the streets, and here’s what we found when we asked “does that surprise you?”

what are your thoughts on that statistc?

hello and thank you!

admin — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 14:05:26 +0000

a little bit about us:

tru beu is a project that began with 2 sisters, amy and kathleen vojta.
we had a wonderful conversation about women, and culture, and found ourselves asking “why” more often than not.
we discovered that at 17 and 27 (years of age) we had some similar challenges, and hopes, and wanted to know what other women felt,
how other women defined beauty, and decided to ascribe to cultural “norms” or not, and at what cost, or benefit.
what are the cultural “norms”?
what types of challenges do women face?

we decided that by asking questions such as these we could better understand where women are today,
and how we can better assist eachother…

we set up the website with a series of questions to collect the information.
and in the next few months we are turning tru beu into a space for a conversation.
it will have 4 main components:

-a web-based video talk show
-an archive of interviews, writing, artwork, of women, and men that would like to share their stories
-a forum for discussion (response to the talk show, archive, or various discussion threads)
-survey questions for future topics of discussion

please join us back here soon,

when we have our first conversation debut.

please leave a comment, if you like,

we’d love to hear what you think so far!

thanks again!

and take care.

-kathleen

why

admin — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 23:37:38 +0000

I little while back I saw a documentary on a program called kalam nawaem, it’s a talk show of 4 women in Arabic culture speaking honestly about their lives. (see the bit of video below for a little more info!)
and I was so delighted to see this, and wondered “where do we have this in America?” I went through the t.v. guide, and watched The View, a little bit of Ellen, and Tyra, even tried out a few episodes of Tyra’s true beauty reality show, and ofcourse watched Oprah, and I love that there are these amazing and beautiful women speaking their voices, and promoting great ideas. But I still want more, more talk about how we can help each other feel great about how we look, no matter what we look like. more talk about what advertisers are selling us, and whether or not we’re buying it?

the second thing that inspired me to start tru beu was my little sister. Her name is Amy, and to me, she has always, and will always be one of the most beautiful young women I know. She’s 18, and I think of her every time I see an ad campaign that makes me feel ugly and sex-less. I think of her every time I hear about another young woman dieting, binge-ing, and hungry. I think of her every time I see the pussycat dolls. I think “does she feel beautiful despite all this? does she feel she has to be sexier, more beautiful, more…
what she, and all young women, girls, (and ourselves) have to be “up against” scares me.
I’m glad that Oprah talks about it, I’m glad that Tyra talks about, I’m glad that so many women, and men that I’ve spoken to since the beginning of tru beu are concerned about it, and I’m so excited to do more. there must be so much more that we can do.

I hope you’ll stay tuned,
please join our mailing list so we can keep you up to date,
We’re in the process of putting together a great team of hosts, and producers to begin the talk show portion of tru beu.

and in the mean time, please remember
you are beautiful.

-kathleen