Posts filed under 'books'
New Moon movie poster
I wouldn’t describe my feelings for the Twilight saga as “love” or even “like,” but more along the lines of “obsessed.” When I read the four books in the Twilight series, along with millions of teenage girls, I was engrossed in a world where one could go to school with vampires and be best friends with a werewolf.
However, another feeling rivaled my fanatic obsession while reading the Twilight saga; extreme aggravation.
One of the reasons why I was interested in reading the Twilight series is that I love books with a strong female lead character. My hopes for Bella Swan as the strong main character started to crumble when I delved a little deeper into the folds of the Twilight world.
Bella has a lot of potential, with her passion, wit, and stubbornness. At times the reader is tricked into thinking Bella is the strong female lead we wish we had more of because we can see her obstinate thoughts and read her bold inner monologue.
But all of that is undermined by the fact that she is constantly seen as the damsel in distress. Stephenie Meyer, the author, chose to put Bella in situations where she was completely dependent on the supernaturally strong men in her life.
Bella (Kristen Stewart) is saved yet again by her supernatural friend Jacob (Taylor Lautner) in New Moon
It isn’t until the of the last book, Breaking Dawn, that Bella actually has an opportunity to showcase her abilities, but even then, Bella undermines her own impact. Edward, her vampire lover, tells Bella her talents saved the family, but we never see Bella own that fact herself.
Millions of young (and not so young) readers have read the Twilight series and are going to flock to the second movie, New Moon, in theaters November 2009. I know there are stories out there that are just as interesting as Twilight AND show girl characters as powerful actors in their own worlds.
Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine
So, where are the compelling stories with strong girls leading the charge? One of my favorite young adult novels with a fantastic main character is Ella Enchanted. Ella is smart, funny, and determined on saving herself in this fairytale with a twist.
What other books out there should girls be reading? Add your ideas to the comments section. Don’t forget to recommend books with action-oriented girl main characters to ALL young readers. It is just as important for boys to see examples of strong females as it is for girls.
–Ashley
October 29th, 2009
Girls like Sarah Totonchi (shown here in 1986) were convinced they were fat at age nine
In his recent article for the Wall Street Journal, Jeffrey Zaslow reports recently contacting women from a 1986 study of fourth graders, in which 75% of the girls revealed that they felt like they weighed too much, and more than half claimed to be on diets.
The girls weren’t alone in their concerns about weight: a fourth-grade boy, when interviewed, said “Fat girls aren’t like regular girls. They aren’t attractive.”
But the societal pressure on girls has increased exponentially during the two decades since the first interview. The original girls from the study had reported drinking diet sodas and watching exercise videos. Now one of them, a middle-school teacher, has to fight with her students to get them to take a few bites of their lunches.
There have been several books in recent years that portray the trend towards increasing body image issues in young girls, which include Mary Piper’s Reviving Ophelia and Joan Jacob Brumberg’s The Body Project. But perhaps the most visceral account comes from Marya Hornbacher, in her autobiographical book, Wasted.
Hornbacher relates several incidents from her childhood: arguing with a friend at age five about who could eat food with the least amount of sugar, panicking after eating two slices of pizza at a party, feeling as though the body in the mirror belonged to someone else. She writes:
“At four I stood, a tiny Eve, choked with mortification at my body, the curve and plane of belly and thigh. At four I realized that I simply would not do. My body, being solid, was too much.” (p. 15)
At age nine, Hornbacher began inducing vomiting, and entered the nightmare world of bulimia and anorexia.
What compels girls as young as nine to embark on dangerous diets and eating disorders? To imagine fourth graders conscientiously sipping diet sodas and watching exercise videos is strange enough, but the situation has moved far beyond that. However, when girls grow up surrounded by media images of alarmingly thin women and food advertisements that link weight with worth, is it really so surprising?
Even one voice of sanity in a girl’s life can make a difference. Don’t be afraid to speak to any young girls that you know, and let them know that their value doesn’t depend on their weight. The Dove website has some great resources, including the True You mentoring guide and some excellent films, especially “Onslaught” and “Amy”.
Help combat the messages young women receive: speak out today!
–Elizabeth
Elizabeth Weaver was trained as an artist, and currently writes for an international women’s organization. She is passionate about helping women to understand their own unique beauty, and hopes to be a good self-image role model to her 3-year-old god-daughter.
September 25th, 2009
Or is it Bridget Jones's Diary: The Early Years?
The Candy Apple children’s book series has titles like How to be a Girly Girl in Just Ten Days, Miss Popularity, and The Boy Next Door. In combination with these titles, the books’ hot pink covers and cutesy cartoon images draw in young readers. Candy Apple books are developed on the theory that clothes, makeup, and boyfriends are the primary concerns for tweenage girls.
According to a teachers’ web site, Scholastic’s Teacher Book Wizard, the books are at a third-grade reading level and are aimed at readers grades three through five. These books are marketed to girls as young as seven!
While reading the book How to be a Girly Girl in Just Ten Days, I felt like I was reading Bridget Jones’s Diary: the Early Years. Each chapter starts with a horoscope or advice on dating that could have been taken from any real magazine aimed at teen girls. Some of the magazine-type blurbs have titles like; “QUIZ: What does he really think of you?” “First Date DOs and DON’Ts,” and “From Friend Boy to Boyfriend — Turn Your Pal into Prince Charming by This Weekend!”
In the book, the eleven-year-old main character, Nick, struggles with her appearance and attracting boys until the end, when she settles back into her old style (basketball jerseys and no makeup). Of course, she also gets the boy of her dreams in the end. The basic plot of the main character eventually being content with her original sporty clothes is truly fantastic. However, there are 138 pages (out of the 163) that excitedly outline makeover tips and discuss how fabulous Nick looks post-makeover.
Although the book is trying to make the point that you are fine just the way you are, the message is weakened by the glamour of Nick’s makeover. The author of this book and others in the Candy Apple series take on topics that are potentially pertinent to the target age (i.e. being comfortable with your own style) but execute it in a way that dilutes the positive objective. The issue of feeling pressure to look a certain way is not addressed so that most third and fourth graders can understand it.
Girls in the target age group for these books pick up stories with slightly older characters — in this case, Nick (age 11) — to feel more mature. When reading about these characters shopping for makeup, something the readers probably don’t do yet, they are less likely to see the subtleties of Nick’s turn-around. Books like this one, in spite of their good intentions, can help push young girls into a world that revolves around physical appearance.
If you have kids or work with them, one way to fight these messages is by talking with the kids while they are reading the books. Ask them questions to get them thinking about the things they are reading.
Do you want to give tips on how these story lines might be better executed? You can contact Scholastic Inc. through their web site by clicking here.
– Ashley
April 29th, 2009
Recently we came across an honest, enlightening account of a mother and daughter’s experience with eating disorders, and we thought you should know about it. Distorted, a book by Lorri Antosz Benson and her daughter Taryn Leigh Benson, chronicles the experiences they respectively shared while Taryn was battling eating disorders as a teenager.
Distorted is an honest and holistic account of what happens when a loved one is struggling with a disease. I’m keen on emphasizing the word disease because this was the first time I deeply understood the fact that an eating disorder is a disease. It may play out differently than alcoholism, but the common link is that both alcoholics and people with eating disorders are consumed by their addiction.
The book is made up of journal entries submitted by the mother and daughter as they live through their experiences. This helps the reader understand the full impact of the disorder and how it affected the lives of everyone involved. Taryn’s entries recount the time of her disorder, and go in depth to explain her battle, the amount of time, energy and focus she put into her disorder, and how she covered it all up to keep it from her parents and her friends. The entries by Lorri, Taryn’s mother, account for the sadness, helplessness, and struggle the family faced and how the family was affected by Taryn’s disease. In great detail, we hear how she, as a mother, did everything possible to research and find solutions to help Taryn and how she coped with watching someone that she loves spiral downward. The reader is able to experience the transformation of both of these women. Through various methods of treatment, therapy, and personal conviction, Taryn finally gets to a place when she realizes she wants to survive and to treat herself well, and Lorri realizes that the only way Taryn will get better is if she wants to. The reader is able to see Lorri struggling with this concept in most of the book.
It was powerful to see the honesties (and dishonesties) of emotions unfold in the book. There is a moment when Taryn returns from her first eating disorder facility. Her parents hope she really is okay and has recovered, and her younger sisters, being more naïve and hopeful, think she is “cured.” However, as the weeks pass, the family begins to see familiar patterns and see Taryn’s drastic mood swings. One entry made by Lorri is particularly powerful for a mother to admit and feel:
“As I a saw my other two girls suffering, it was hard not to feel resentment towards Taryn. Although I intellectually knew she was also hurting, emotionally I hated what her inability to cope was doing for the rest of us. And of course, I couldn’t confront her, although my instincts told me to. I could hear the party line playing in my head. ‘She is harder on herself than we could ever be.’ So I journaled.”
While we have heard of stories in the media about girls with eating disorders, some simply sensationalistic, Taryn and Lorri’s account is real and sincere. This book is great for anyone to read who is recovering from an eating disorder and for those whose loved ones are dealing with one.
To buy the book, click here. Amazon.com gives About-Face a percentage of the proceeds from sales from our web site.
- A.J.
July 21st, 2008
“Mommy, does plastic surgery make you look like a different person?” “No, it just makes you look more beautiful than you used to be.”
From my seat next to her, both of us facing the Starbucks storefront, I balked. Her reflection gave her away: tall, thin, with a tightly drawn face and deep-set eyes.
“Don’t you think Mommy looks better now?” she murmured to herself, pulling out a compact mirror and gently reapplying foundation to her cheeks. Her daughters, around ages three and five, were playing rambunctiously among the tables. When her younger daughter tried to take the compact, her mother screeched, “No! Don’t use it! You have a nice complexion. If you use it, it will clog your pores and give you pimples.”
Later, her older daughter asked if she could comb her mother’s hair, which went smoothly until the comb accidentally grazed the woman’s forehead. She shrieked, “Ow! You hateful thing, look what you did! Wow, it’s really deep! You scratched me! It really hurts! Look at my forehead! I’m going to give your sister a present and not you! You’re not getting ice cream tonight!” This was, of course, followed by 7.5 minutes (I kept track) of non-stop preening in the mirror and tending to her forehead, while she sent her daughter to fetch ice water for her.
Now, I am not a parent, nor do I have much of an affinity with children. However, I was stupefied by that woman’s behavior. I recognize that people tend to overhear parents in their worst moments, but it took all the lovingkindness and humility I had not to reprimand that woman (or slap her last facelift clear off!). Her children were outgoing, inquisitive, and un-self-conscious. They were still young enough to prefer their hair wild and unkempt, their clothing rumpled and comfortable. And by projecting her fears of aging and “ugliness” on her daughters, she was normalizing the world of makeup and plastic surgery to girls just learning to read.
From My Beautiful Mommy
Speaking of which, a book called My Beautiful Mommy has been getting a lot of press lately. The book, aimed at young children, recasts a musclebound plastic surgeon as the fairy godmother for a post-pregnancy mother as she gets a nose job, tummy tuck, and breast implants. The book claims to explain the desire for cosmetic surgery and ease the fears children have of their mothers going under the knife. Here’s the thing though: the kids have the right idea. While “mommy makeovers” (combo tummy tuck and breast augmentation) may be increasingly popular these days, the fact remains that surgery is surgery, elective or not. I was discussing plastic surgery with a friend who has undergone thirteen procedures to correct a cleft palate, and he silenced me during my moral waffling. “After experiencing what I have, imagining people choosing to subject themselves to it seems selfish and stupid.” I mean, I’ve only had my wisdom teeth removed, and that was enough!
I think the idea of a children’s book praising and oversimplifying plastic surgery is dangerous. If a mother chooses to alter her appearance, it should be her responsibility to explain her reasoning to her child — after all, she knows better than a book. Also, let me just say of the title: Who said my mother isn’t absolutely gorgeous exactly as she is?!
Ultimately, sitting there in Starbucks, I said nothing. I felt too young. Instead, I hoped that the girls would develop a healthy sense of rebellion, thanked my stunning mother for raising me, and went back out into the rain.
What would you have done? Would you have felt comfortable saying anything (and if so, what is appropriate to say)? And to what extent did your parents’ ideas about bodies and beauty influence you? I’m really curious to see some responses.
– A.I.
July 1st, 2008
The Devil Wears Prada meets a drill sergeant in this best-selling diet book, Skinny Bitch. Does that recipe sound unappealing to you, too?
Blech. It smacks of chick-lit friendly marketing with that totally hip touch of sass (read: swearing). So what is it really? A vegan diet book. Apparently it’s light on the recipes because it’s chock full of “tough-love for savvy girls”. Huh?
Look, I’m cool with veganism. And I’m all about eating less-processed foods. But it is a bald-faced lie to tell people that veganism will make everyone — no matter their body type or genetic profile — skinny. There can be health benefits that come along with cutting out meat and dairy, but that does not automatically result in elongated torsos, designer sunglasses, and a Hollywood-ready little black dress (right, front cover?).
Also, reading the title feels like chewing on tinfoil to me. There’s a lame smugness to it: it assumes that all non-skinny women are jealous of skinny ones, that all skinny women are bitches, that becoming skinny automatically lends you an air of superiority. Wrong, wrong, wrong.
It’s dumb female-to-female hostility dressed up as faux empowerment, and to me, that goes down worse than last night’s barbecued seitan.
-A.I.
March 25th, 2008
