We recently created a new website that incorporates our author blog – go to randomhouse.com.au/blog for all the latest news and bulletins, essays, features, opinions from our bestselling authors.
Find out what’s being said, debated, and discussed in the world of books and ideas.
I have noticed a spate of articles in the media of late on “mean girls”; commentators have been quick to highlight, and to almost revel, in tales of adolescent girls who bully others.
I work face to face with hundreds of teenage girls from right across Australia and New Zealand each week. What do I see? Is bullying and bitchiness as rampant in our classrooms as the media would have us believe?
I was really interested in the findings of a recent study conducted by Janet Hyde, a University of Wisconsin-Madison Professor of Psychology, and Janet Mertz, a UW-Madison Professor of Oncology, on girls and mathematics. They analysed studies from around the world on mathematics performance along with gender inequality as measured by the World Economic Forum’s Gender Gap Index. Their conclusion? Girls do understand mathematics, but we don’t want them to.
Like the rest of the world, I was sickened by the death earlier this year of Neda Agha-Soltan, a young woman shot in the protests that followed the dubious election result in Iran. The 26-year-old university student was with her singing teacher at the time of her death. In Iran, women are forbidden to sing publicly, so already we know that Neda was a courageous woman. Because her name means “voice” in Farsi, soon after the mobile phone camera footage of her death was shared around the world, people began calling her “the voice of Iran.”
For Neda’s life not to have been lived and lost in vain, we should begin thinking of her as the voice of women everywhere.
Many girls I work with tell me they are stressed – really stressed. They feel exhausted and overwhelmed. They have headaches, trouble sleeping, chronically tight muscles, fatigue and lack of appetite or weight gain, which are recognised signs of stress.
Why do our young women feel such debilitating pressure?
I believe many teen girls are suffering from the Supergirl epidemic. They feel they must be smart, popular, thin and attractive, all while displaying a Paris Hiltonesque worldliness. American writer Courtney Martin in her book Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters sums up the modern girl’s dilemma this way:
We have the ultimate goal of effortless perfectionism.
Most dolls for little girls are nowadays designed to represent teenage girls or women. One exception is Mattel’s My Scene, Growing Up Glam doll, which depicts a tween, a girl aged 8–12 years. She is dressed in lacy stockings, short skirt, diamanté belt and midriff top. Her accessories? A teddy bear and schoolbooks.
Twist the screw on her back – oh, how symbolic! –her abdomen stretches. It’s gruesome to watch. She looks as though she is being stretched by a medieval torture device. And hey presto, now she’s a ‘curvy, cool teen’. But wait, you say, all that has really changed is that her stomach has stretched to make her appear taller.
The Random Blog 