Testimonials

Peter Hastie, PLC Sydney & Armidale

Melinda Tankard Reist spoke to a gathering of over 2000 people at the PLC Sydney Speech Day at the Sydney Opera House on December 1st 2009. Melinda is a well-known writer, commentator and advocate for women’s causes, both within Australia and around the world. She is a speaker who brings illumination, passion and conviction to her subject, especially when she touches on such important issues as the growing sexualisation of girls and objectification of women. Melinda brings hard, evidence-based research to the topics on which she speaks, which gives her presentations a strong air of authority and credibility. She was able to engage an audience across a broad range of ages, from eight year olds to persons in their senior years. She is an impressive advocate and was the catalyst for ongoing discussion within the College.

Wendy Ashley-Cooper, The Glennie School

Melinda Tankard Reist did not disappoint as a Guest Speaker: on the contrary, she was inspirational. She spoke with great knowledge, understanding and passion about young women and their situation in Australia today. She highlighted both the tremendous opportunities now open to women which were not so, one hundred years ago, as well as pointing to the many pitfalls which a young woman encounters in her quest to be “all she can be.” This latter phrase is the tag line of The Glennie School and Melinda, in her speech, skilfully wove it into the fabric of her talk. The large audience…found her address to be outstanding.

Melinda Tankard Reist is a strong advocate for all things which help to nurture and develop young women to be strong, confident, capable and self-assured adults. She stands against anything that would undermine the capacity of girls to reach maturity unharmed…I can recommend her without hesitation.

Alexandra Norton, Abbotsleigh

I am very pleased to offer a reference for Melinda Tankard Reist and have no hesitation in doing so.

Melinda came to Abbotsleigh to speak at a mother daughter breakfast on Friday 14 August 2009. The audience was made up of girls from Years 7-9 and their mothers and we had well over 200 in attendance. We were pleasantly surprised at the response to both the breakfast format and the speaker and her topic. Melinda’s presentation was based on how we can help girls resist the negative messages from popular culture and recognise their true value and worth.

Using both illustrative slides and an excellent sense of humour, Melinda was able to both sensitively and succinctly deliver an (age appropriate) message that was most challenging – in a sense that it made the mothers realise how desensitised we have become to the media in all its forms. She also touched on accepted – and even expected teenage party behaviour as well as the dangers of facebook and various internet sites – about which we as parents again, scarily, knew nothing!

I could not recommend Melinda highly enough. She was warm, funny, sincere and passionate. She held the attention of the girls equally as well as the mothers – no mean feat, as I am sure you are aware! As part of the ticket price of our breakfast, we included a copy of Faking It – the research paper presented in magazine format to each mother/daughter pair.

The breakfast was so successful, we will be inviting Melinda back again. We had a number of mothers who wanted their older daughters to hear the message as well.

Melinda’s final slide was a series of strategies to help reinforce the message. Melinda sent them to me so we could include them in our weekly school newletter. I have attached them to give you more of an idea of some of the topics discussed on the day.

The feedback we had from mothers was overwhelmingly positive. Not only were their eyes opened to what is before our daughters on a daily basis, they were given tools to begin to combat the negativity. They were also grateful to be given access to a resource such as Melinda and saw Abbotsleigh as being proactive in promoting this important issue.

Glenda Stevens, St Catherine’s School Waverley NSW

Melinda spoke to our parent body earlier this year (2009).

Her subject matter was well researched and interesting and appropriate for an adult audience.

She is a dynamic and capable speaker. She is very intelligent and inspiring.

Clare

Thank-you, thank-you, thank-you, a million times over, for your website.

I’m a seventeen year-old student, and the way women and girls are objectified in every single mass media format that I can think of repulses me. I’m doing a oral presentation on the issue for an year 12 English SAC, and I borrowed the ‘Getting Real’ book from my library. Your introduction has proven an invaluable source of information, opinion, and resources for me.

The objectification of women in the media is an issue that I am incredibly passionate about, and I cannot tell you how amazing it was to pick up ‘Getting Real’. It opened my eyes even more to things that I hadn’t considered, and just abhorred on face value – for example, the impact of pornography, and the way in which Kellie Crawford felt the need to prove her femininity, when the Wiggles do not. Your website continues to provide more and more resources, and as I read each article, I get more and more worked up (and consequently, more and more passionate). Believe me when I say, I will me recommending it to my friends (who I think are getting sick of my constant ranting).

You are truly an inspiration, and I thank you again.

Regards,

Clare