Girl Power

Aquamarine will separate the world into two camps: Fourteen-year-old girls who will love it, and everyone else, all of whom will realize this is a movie only 14-year-old girls can love. The story of two best friends who help a mermaid find true love, Aquamarine exhibits a welcome empathy for adolescent girls and an understanding of how they interact. It also understands - in ways that its target audience may not - that there's a difference between what is important (friendship, self-confidence, altruism)

Who knows how George Clooney won Stacy Keibler's heart, but 27 years ago, winning over young Stacy could be done with a Cabbage Patch and a Pound Puppy. On Christmas Day, Keibler shared with her Twitter followers a letter she wrote to Santa in 1985, when she was just a tot. Unassuming, even then, it didn't take much to make the Baltimore girl happy. She wanted Cabbage Patch twins, a Cabbage Patch bike and -- holy girl power -- a Princess of Power Castle. She also hoped Santa -- if he wasn't too busy -- could throw in a tape recorder and a pound puppy.

Most women are pretty sick of the usual labels -- chicks, broads, blondes, brunettes, whatever -- but now we just might have a reason to espouse them. New T-shirts put out by the nonprofit group Campaign for Our Children (best known for its creative media messages about teen-pregnancy prevention) announce BABE, DIVA and CHIC in capital letters across their fronts and backs. But they're not stereotyping tags; instead they're declarations of girl power, because they're actually acronyms, the meanings of which are spelled out beneath each one. B.A.B.

Watching the Roller Derby movie "Whip It" is like spending roughly two hours with a frisky group of girls in a female empowerment camp. In the young-adult source book of the same name, the heroine, Bliss Cavendar, says in her first-person narration that "for the record, the roller-derby sisterhood is the real thing, not tainted by that fake you-go-girl, Oprah vibe you get from Noxzema commercials." She states she "really knows this" because "no one actually says 'you go, girl,' " - instead they say things like "you rock the house."

Chasing Papi, a girl-power comedy with a Latin beat, is an unfunny if generally good-natured ordeal. Billed as the "first major studio comedy to reflect the Hispanic cultural experience in America," the film looks at three Latina characters. Cici, a cocktail waitress from Miami, is a fun-loving hottie who favors big hair and loose, cleavage-revealing outfits. The more reserved Lorena, a Chicago attorney, most often wears conservative suits accessorized with conservative ties. Patricia, an heiress, lives in New York where she pampers her dog Fifi, wears nothing but haute couture and whines.

DO YOUNG women care more about their bodies than their brains? Time magazine recently answered "yes." In a cover story titled "Is feminism dead?" Time reported that young women today equate power with glamour and beauty. Said one 18-year-old: "Girl power means you wear hot pants and a bra with some sequins on it."Yet the very same week, another piece of news made quieter headlines. According to the Census Bureau, for the first time in history, more women than men ages 25-29 are earning college and graduate degrees.

The national Girl Power! Campaign and Mount Pisgah AME Church in Columbia are joining forces to help girls make the stormy transition from childhood to adolescence.Girl Power!, a public education program begun a year ago by Secretary of Health and Human Services Donna E. Shalala, is aimed at addressing important issues in girls' lives and helping to discourage their use of alcohol, tobacco and drugs.Joyce L. Weddington, coordinator of Howard County's Office of Substance Abuse Impact Services, said the Girl Power!

Who has more girl power, the Spice Girls or Ani DiFranco? Musically, the two could not be further apart. DiFranco is folkie and punky; the Spice Girls are pop stars and funky. DiFranco has a heritage that includes populist Woody Guthrie and feminist Ferron; the Spice Girls belong to a tradition of pop stars like Bananarama and Take That!. DiFranco's stage show is low-key and homey, relying on nothing more elaborate than amps and lights; the Spice Girls are touring with a stage that's bigger and more elaborate than many amusement parks.

Who knows how George Clooney won Stacy Keibler's heart, but 27 years ago, winning over young Stacy could be done with a Cabbage Patch and a Pound Puppy. On Christmas Day, Keibler shared with her Twitter followers a letter she wrote to Santa in 1985, when she was just a tot. Unassuming, even then, it didn't take much to make the Baltimore girl happy. She wanted Cabbage Patch twins, a Cabbage Patch bike and -- holy girl power -- a Princess of Power Castle. She also hoped Santa -- if he wasn't too busy -- could throw in a tape recorder and a pound puppy.

Integral relocating Integral Systems Inc., a provider of software for command and control systems for satellites, has announced plans to move its corporate headquarters from Lanham in Prince George's County to Columbia next year, bringing more than 200 jobs to the area. The company, founded in 1982, operates at three locations in the United States and one in France. Its new headquarters, under construction, is in Gateway Exchange, a three-building complex being developed by Corporate Office Properties Trust in Columbia Gateway Business Park.

Integral relocating Integral Systems Inc., a provider of software for command and control systems for satellites, has announced plans to move its corporate headquarters from Lanham in Prince George's County to Columbia next year, bringing more than 200 jobs to the area. The company, founded in 1982, operates at three locations in the United States and one in France. Its new headquarters, under construction, is in Gateway Exchange, a three-building complex being developed by Corporate Office Properties Trust in Columbia Gateway Business Park.

When the Spice Girls stormed America's shores in 1996 with their pop confection "Wannabe" and chants of "Girl power!" no one could have predicted how big their careers would get or how sturdy their roles in popular culture would be more than a decade later. Pop groups such as 'N Sync and Backstreet Boys may have sold more records, but they never made a movie like the Spice Girls and they certainly don't have any United Nations ambassadors for good will among them. Their combination of pop hits, cartoonish personalities and clever marketing made the Spice Girls more than a successful pop group -- they were a global phenomenon in the late '90s, selling more than 55 million albums, breaking all sorts of British chart records and taking their song "2 Become 1" to No. 1 in 53 countries.

Forget The Sopranos. Must-see TV last weekend was the Belmont Stakes, the third leg of the most emotionally satisfying Triple Crown series in years. A combination of excellent equine athletes, colorful supporting players and the sheer unpredictability that is horse racing produced a show that gave the sport so important to Maryland a shot in the arm. And, OK, this isn't really about girl power - except perhaps in the most literal sense. But when Rags to Riches dueled Preakness winner Curlin through the Belmont's closing stretch to become the first filly to win the mile-and-a-half classic in 102 years, the nearly three decades without a Triple Crown winner suddenly didn't seem to matter so much.

Whoopi Goldberg wants to empower girls to get in touch with their inner boy. Sports -- the sweaty, fast, kick-butt kind of sports -- are not just for boys anymore, Goldberg said. "We're not used to seeing girls play sports. If they're ice-skating? Maybe. If they're doing gymnastics? Possibly. But soccer?" So Goldberg developed Just for Kicks, a TV series that revolves around the friendships and issues facing the girls on a New York City soccer team. "Most people still have this idea that if you're doing what is considered a sport, you don't get to be a girl," Goldberg said.

Aquamarine will separate the world into two camps: Fourteen-year-old girls who will love it, and everyone else, all of whom will realize this is a movie only 14-year-old girls can love. The story of two best friends who help a mermaid find true love, Aquamarine exhibits a welcome empathy for adolescent girls and an understanding of how they interact. It also understands - in ways that its target audience may not - that there's a difference between what is important (friendship, self-confidence, altruism)

THOSE girls didn't care. There was absolutely no shame in their game. One night about a month or so ago, my friends and I were hangin' in a D.C. club as Nina Sky's "Move Ya Body" boomed through the place. Two women - ample-figured sistas with a "whole lotta junk in their trunk" - dominated the tight space in front of us. They were squeezed into short, unforgiving dresses, had kicked off their heels and were grindin', gyratin', lost in the music. Although my best friend Tiffany was unnerved by the sight of those cottage cheese thighs in wee-little dresses, I couldn't blame the sistas for breakin' it down on the floor.

One of the running gags in "Spice World" features George Wendt as an American producer keen on getting the Spice Girls into a movie. So Wendt spends the film pitching idea after outlandish idea to the group's manager (Richard E. Grant), until he eventually sells Grant on the plot that is "Spice World."Wacky, huh? But not as wacky as some of the ideas that weren't in the movie."The Spice of Music": Misfits in an Austrian convent just before World War II, the Spice Girls are hired as governesses by Baron Von Klapp-Trapp (Elton John)

Forget The Sopranos. Must-see TV last weekend was the Belmont Stakes, the third leg of the most emotionally satisfying Triple Crown series in years. A combination of excellent equine athletes, colorful supporting players and the sheer unpredictability that is horse racing produced a show that gave the sport so important to Maryland a shot in the arm. And, OK, this isn't really about girl power - except perhaps in the most literal sense. But when Rags to Riches dueled Preakness winner Curlin through the Belmont's closing stretch to become the first filly to win the mile-and-a-half classic in 102 years, the nearly three decades without a Triple Crown winner suddenly didn't seem to matter so much.

Chasing Papi, a girl-power comedy with a Latin beat, is an unfunny if generally good-natured ordeal. Billed as the "first major studio comedy to reflect the Hispanic cultural experience in America," the film looks at three Latina characters. Cici, a cocktail waitress from Miami, is a fun-loving hottie who favors big hair and loose, cleavage-revealing outfits. The more reserved Lorena, a Chicago attorney, most often wears conservative suits accessorized with conservative ties. Patricia, an heiress, lives in New York where she pampers her dog Fifi, wears nothing but haute couture and whines.

Blue Crush is such a blast to look at, it seems a shame to talk about its formulaic plot, cliched dialogue and absolute predictability, not to mention a relationship that undercuts much of what the movie is trying to say. So let's hold off for a while and look at the positives. And there are several. Anne Marie (Kate Bosworth) is a gal on a mission: A champion surfer since she was a little girl, she has dreams of making the big time. And when you live in Hawaii, and spend every one of your spare moments atop a surfboard, and have to struggle to make financial ends meet, those dreams can lead to only one thing: mastering the pipe, the most dangerous, most spectacular waves imaginable, and riding them all the way to tournament championships and big-money sponsorships.