Spreading the AVILA Love!!

This is a video of a recent in store appearance I made celebrating the Grand Opening of Scout & Molly's Town Center location.  

Beautiful, ethical, and affordable accessories are my passion and so thankful for the opportunity and support of other small business owners.

 Girl power in full effect!

 

From a recent in store appearance at Scout & Molly's Jacksonville celebrating their grand opening in the Town Center!

Teenage Girls are Facing Impossible Expectations

It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.  e.e. Cummings

 

https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/27/opinions/girls-power-expectation-depression-opinion-simmons/index.html

 

Rachel Simmons is the author of "Enough As She Is: How to Help Girls Move Beyond Impossible Standards of Success to Live Happy, Healthy, Fulfilling Lives." Follow her on Twitter @racheljsimmons. The views expressed in this commentary are her own.

(CNN)At a moment when girls enjoy historic opportunity -- watching Chloe Kim and Mikaela Shiffrin soar to gold, and Oprah preach girl power from the Golden Globes stage -- teen girls tell researchers they are twice as depressed, anxious and stressed out as boys. And though girls beat out boys in college and graduate school admissions, according to a University of California-Los Angeles study, female college freshmen have never been lonelier or less happy.

In the so-called age of girl power, we have failed to cut loose our most regressive standards of female success -- like pleasing others and looking sexy -- and to replace them with something more progressive -- like valuing intelligence and hard work. Instead, we have shoveled more and more expectation onto the already robust pile of qualities we expect girls to possess.

And social media -- where, according to Pew Research, girls tend to dominate, using visual platforms like Instagram and Snapchat in far greater numbers than boys -- isn't helping the matter. The pressure to get at least one like per minute on Instagram and keep up scores of daily Snapchat "streaks" is unending.

"I can't go to sleep at night until I answer all my notifications," one high school student told me last week. Adolescent girls get the least sleep of any group of youth.
Plus, a daily feed of friends and celebrities showing off tight abs and thin arms deepens girls' body shame, new research has found.

Girls who spend the most time using technology, a 2017 study revealed, were most likely to say they were sad or depressed nearly every day. They were also more likely to want to change their appearance, not enjoy coming to school and not participate in sports and other activities.

But social media and the internet are only part of the issue. I have been asking adolescent girls to describe what it means to them to be successful. They tell me they are under pressure to be superhuman: ambitious, smart and hardworking, athletic, pretty and sexy, socially active, nice and popular -- both online and off.

Psychologists call this "role overload" -- too many roles for a single person to play -- and "role conflict"-- when the roles you play are at odds with one another. The effort required to get a bikini body will cut away at the hours you need to spend in the lab to get into medical school.

The sheer impossibility of measuring up has left a generation of girls with the enduring belief that, no matter how many achievements they rack up, they are not enough as they are. The path their mothers and grandmothers cleared so their girls could enjoy every opportunity is marked by self criticism, overthinking and fear of failure.

In other words, we are raising a generation of girls who may look exceptional on paper but are often anxious and overwhelmed in life -- who feel that, no matter how hard they try, they will never be smart enough, successful enough, pretty enough, thin enough, well liked enough, witty enough online or sexy enough.

An "anything is possible" mentality has transformed into a mental health crisis. Affluent girls, in particular, who get the most access and opportunity to achieve, exhibit more adjustment problems, across more domains, than any other group of American youth -- yet continue to push themselves forward. And high achieving girls, Stanford professor Carol Dweck found, are the group of youth most "debilitated" by failure.

Girls need help redefining success in healthier ways. New research has found that self-compassion, a three-step practice that teaches self-kindness in the face of setbacks, relieves symptoms of anxiety and depression for teens, especially those who suffer from chronic academic stress. Notably, high school girls currently have the lowest levels of self-compassion of any group of youth.

Finding purpose -- doing something you genuinely love that joins you to something bigger than yourself, or makes the world better -- can also shield adolescents from the most negative effects of stress. At a moment when so many teens get the message that what a college admissions committee wants matters more than anything they care about, helping girls find their "north star" has never been more important.

Adults should also stop telling girls they put too much pressure on themselves, and instead reassure daughters that it's a toxic culture that is asking too much of girls. This can mitigate girls' feelings of isolation and self-blame.

To defer to someone else's definition of a life well-lived is a Faustian bargain. As Anna Quindlen has written, "If your success is not on your own terms, if it looks good to the world but does not feel good in your heart, it is not success at all."

 

London Fashion Week Autumn/Winter 2018 Color Forecast

Clearly, AVILA marches to the beat of her own drummer but I love getting inspiration and seeing what is out there.  What I loved about this article is that they recommend exploring nuances within color families!  Enjoy!!

https://www.pantone.com/fashion-color-trend-report-london-autumn-winter-2018

Each season the team at the Pantone Color Institute creates the Pantone Fashion Color Trend Report; a color overview highlighting the top colors fashion designers showing at London Fashion Week will be featuring in their collections for the upcoming season. With color on the catwalk a key indicator of the color stories we can expect to see showing up across all areas of design, the Pantone Fashion Color Trend Report is your easily accessible guide to the season’s most important color trends.

PANTONE 15-1515 Mellow Rose, a beloved and subtle, traditional English shade, and PANTONE 18-2045 Pink Peacock, in contrast, a striking statement color.

Autumnal hues that evoke the feeling of leaves on the forest floor, rich plumage and twilight reveal a modern fall palette of deep and rich tones with outbursts of colorful surprise. With the addition of Pink Peacock and Mellow Rose to the London palette, we see an enhanced feeling of playfulness and a color range whose greater variety offers more opportunity for intriguing color combinations.

 PANTONE 19-1536 Red Pear
PANTONE 19-1536
Red Pear
Deliciously deep red, whose luscious depth entices.
  PANTONE 18-1549 Valiant Poppy
PANTONE 18-1549
Valiant Poppy
Brave and outgoing red shade effusive in its allure.
  PANTONE 18-4048 Nebulas Blue
PANTONE 18-4048
Nebulas Blue
Reminiscent of twilight, a thoughtful, starry-eyed blue.

  PANTONE 15-0850 Ceylon Yellow
PANTONE 15-0850
Ceylon Yellow
Savory and spicy yellow adds an exotic touch.

 PANTONE 18-0625 Martini Olive
PANTONE 18-0625
Martini Olive
Smooth, sophisticated and urbane green adds depth to the Fall/Winter 2018 palette.

  PANTONE 16-1255 Russet Orange
PANTONE 16-1255
Russet Orange
This forest floor orange speaks to earthen warmth.

  PANTONE 18-3838 Ultra Violet
PANTONE 18-3838
Ultra Violet
Inventive and imaginative Ultra Violet lights the way for what is yet to come.

  PANTONE 15-3520 Crocus Petal
PANTONE 15-3520
Crocus Petal
A cultivated and refined hue adds a light and airy spring-like feeling demand.

 PANTONE 15-1515 Mellow Rose
PANTONE 15-1515
Mellow Rose
A beloved traditional English shade adds unexpected intrigue.

  PANTONE 12-0740 Limelight
PANTONE 12-0740
Limelight
Animated and effervescent, a pungent yellow-green becomes the center of attention.

  PANTONE 18-5025 Quetzal Green
PANTONE 18-5025
Quetzal Green
A deep elegant blue-green hue suggestive of rich plumage.

  PANTONE 18-2045 Pink Peacock
PANTONE 18-2045
Pink Peacock
A bright and bold dramatic pink for a more experimental approach.

About the Autumn/Winter 2018 Classic Color Palette
While there is no ‘typical’ anymore, there remains a need for structure and foundation in everyday fashion. We increased the number of core colors from four to five due to the ease in which they can be implemented, and their ability to cross the seasons. These shades are more crucial than ever, serving as the critical building block as ‘trends’ stay relevant longer, and consumers look to add variety through new textures, fabrics and beautiful combinations.

 PANTONE 19-4031 Sargasso Sea
PANTONE 19-4031
Sargasso Sea
Boundless and fathomless blue mooring the palette.

  PANTONE 11-4801 Tofu
PANTONE 11-4801
Tofu
Creamy white staple.

  PANTONE 14-1116 Almond Buff
PANTONE 14-1116
Almond Buff
Natural baby camel hue with understated appeal.

  PANTONE 14-4107 Quiet Gray
PANTONE 14-4107
Quiet Gray
Unobtrusive and timeless soft gray.

  PANTONE 16-1438 Meerkat
PANTONE 16-1438
Meerkat
A highly adaptable toasty burnished brown.