“When you exclude yourself from this community, it brings everyone down and backfires on you as well.”

Miami girls get a bad rap. The term conjures notions of strappy stilettos, skintight dresses, and cringe-worthy pronunciations of “supposedly.”

“Just look it up on Google,” Ekaterina Juskowski suggests. “All you get are sexually charged images of women’s behinds and breasts in bathing suits.”

Even though Juskowski wasn’t born in Miami, she considers herself a Miami girl — with pride. She hopes to inspire other Miami women to embrace the term too and realize they’re part of a sisterhood of talented local women. But first, Juskowski says, the hypersexualized stereotype must be redefined. This year, she unveiled an organization (fittingly called the Miami Girls Foundation) that aims to do just that.

“The Miami Girls Foundation will bring positive images to the term,” Juskowski says. “The only way to solve the problem is to stand up and say, ‘I’m brilliant and a Miami girl, and there are a lot of other women just like me.’

Read the full article by Jess Swanson in Miami New Times.