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The Girls' Guide to Life: Take charge of your personal life, your school time, your social scene, and much more!
A handbook for girls ages eight to twelve familiarizes them with the basic issues affecting girls and women today and explains how to cultivate a healthy self-image, presenting a mix of facts, activities, profiles, poems, and resource lists. Original.
160 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1997
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
July 28, 2017
Women in the United States experience sexism and misogyny in all walks of life, and one of the primary environments for experiencing both is high school. With that in mind, Catherine Dee takes on the active, mercurial and brilliant mind of the teenage girl and presents “radical” ideas about gender equality that I guarantee you have rarely been presented to them outside of this book. The fact that she starts out explaining what a feminist is (and that it’s not a dirty word or a euphemism for man-hating) shows just how far she has to go as she addresses various aspects of girls’ personal lives, school lives and their places in society.
The first section focuses on self-esteem, beauty facts and myths, friendship, home-life and personal safety. I approached this section with a little trepidation because I wasn’t sure how much more “you’re beautiful just the way you are” rhetoric, which is inevitably followed by a subtle suggestion to buy a product to make you more beautiful, I could take. Though the language throughout the book sounds a little affected, like an adult trying to mimic teenage language, Dee takes a much stronger stance on the importance of confidence, strength, caring and voice than your average teen magazine or health text book. The section on beauty not only turns a critical eye on the fake representations of beauty in the media, it also suggests ways girls can actively combat these issues, such as by protesting a beauty pageant. As Dee encourages girls to “live out loud” by cultivating interests and not being afraid to draw attention to themselves, she also points out ways to handle unwelcome attention, like sexual harassment and even assault.
The second section focuses on school and laudably refutes a myth Barbie herself decided to perpetuate—that math is hard. Both math and the hard sciences, Dee asserts, are important for girls to study and excel in, as are sports, especially team sports. Dee addresses sexual harassment again in a school context in this section along with pointing out how pervasive, and conquerable, sexism is in the classroom.
The third section discusses society in general and the place of the teenage girl in it in particular. Some more obvious culprits of gender inequality are addressed, including the sexism and outright misogyny in television, songs, movies and ads. A little further off these well-trodden paths are chapters on gender-neutral language and discrimination in the art world, where most of the artists are men and most of the nude subjects are women. Dee concludes her work by talking about the importance of having a career that truly expresses who you are and by offering some general tips for putting her ideas, and girls’ own, into action.
One of the best parts about this book is the quotes by both famous women, like Maya Angelou, and not-so-famous women, particularly teen girls Dee has interviewed. I liked these particularly because in many cases, this book is the only one these girls are likely to read with this information in it—until the book encourages them to consume other media by women and for women. (My guess is Dee realizes that high school and “teen-oriented” media are much less likely to do it.) Another thing that really strengthens the book is that in each chapter Dee gives practical suggestions for putting her ideas into use. In her chapter on housework, for example, she suggests divvying up housework on a rotating basis so that everyone does all the chores equally or assigning a point value to each chore based on difficulty, with each family member having an equal number of points. And though I find the language in the book a little off-putting (and I acknowledge that it could be how teenagers talk as it’s been a while since I’ve been one), the only major critique I have is that the chapter on school-related sexual harassment is not nearly strong enough. One of the suggestions Dee makes is that a girl being harassed by another (presumably male) student is that she ask him to stop. That seems basic, but it sounds a little cowardly. High school is one of several places where a girl who acts in any way aggressive, like hitting a ball particularly well, is often labeled a “dyke,” as is a girl who refuses the advances of a boy who is interested in her. As such, it sounds like Dee wants girls to avoid this label if they can by starting out in a non-confrontational way. But she acknowledges that sexual harassment, unlike flirting, is not about sex but about power. Given this observation, the best advice to a girl experiencing sexual harassment, is a strong, brook-no-argument STATEMENT (not polite request) for the harassment to stop. If the harasser sees he has not achieved power because of a powerful act on the part of a girl, he is likely to back off. A request to quit, or a letter, if a girl is hesitant to confront a harasser in person(!), does not show a woman’s power; yelling in a harasser’s face is more likely to. Dee also presents “Real-Life Reactions” to three sexual harassment scenarios and, whether she intends to or not, perpetuates the myth that sexual harassment and assault come from mostly from strangers (seventy-eight percent of the time, they don’t) and that it is more acceptable to have a more aggressive reaction to a stranger than to a friend, boyfriend or acquaintance. In one scenario, where a girl is harassed by a man on the street who then begins to follow her, she confronts him face to face, “demanding” to know what he is doing. In the second scenario, however, a girl is pushed against a locker by her boyfriend who cups her breast in his hand while his friend looks on. Her reaction is to tell her boyfriend (later, so that the laddie doesn’t feel embarrassed in front of his buddies) that that made her “uncomfortable” and “asks” him not to do again. In the first scenario, a girl responded aggressively to a stranger who never actually touched her. In the second, a girl submitted to SEXUAL ASSAULT by her boyfriend and later made a polite request for him not to do it again. Hopefully I was not the only person reading the second scenario and wondering why the girl’s knee was not in the groin of her quite-recent ex-boyfriend. Dee recommends additional reading at the end of each chapter, including this one, and I hope the literature she recommends regarding sexual harassment is stronger than what she suggests.
That said, I would pass this book on to teen girls and adults I thought might be interested—with the caveat that I have other reading to help them deal with sexual harassment. Dee’s work is a refreshing take on how to live. And I must raise my hat to an author who writes a work geared toward teen girl audiences that does not have that pervasive—and largely fictitious—male gaze dictating girls’ every move.
The first section focuses on self-esteem, beauty facts and myths, friendship, home-life and personal safety. I approached this section with a little trepidation because I wasn’t sure how much more “you’re beautiful just the way you are” rhetoric, which is inevitably followed by a subtle suggestion to buy a product to make you more beautiful, I could take. Though the language throughout the book sounds a little affected, like an adult trying to mimic teenage language, Dee takes a much stronger stance on the importance of confidence, strength, caring and voice than your average teen magazine or health text book. The section on beauty not only turns a critical eye on the fake representations of beauty in the media, it also suggests ways girls can actively combat these issues, such as by protesting a beauty pageant. As Dee encourages girls to “live out loud” by cultivating interests and not being afraid to draw attention to themselves, she also points out ways to handle unwelcome attention, like sexual harassment and even assault.
The second section focuses on school and laudably refutes a myth Barbie herself decided to perpetuate—that math is hard. Both math and the hard sciences, Dee asserts, are important for girls to study and excel in, as are sports, especially team sports. Dee addresses sexual harassment again in a school context in this section along with pointing out how pervasive, and conquerable, sexism is in the classroom.
The third section discusses society in general and the place of the teenage girl in it in particular. Some more obvious culprits of gender inequality are addressed, including the sexism and outright misogyny in television, songs, movies and ads. A little further off these well-trodden paths are chapters on gender-neutral language and discrimination in the art world, where most of the artists are men and most of the nude subjects are women. Dee concludes her work by talking about the importance of having a career that truly expresses who you are and by offering some general tips for putting her ideas, and girls’ own, into action.
One of the best parts about this book is the quotes by both famous women, like Maya Angelou, and not-so-famous women, particularly teen girls Dee has interviewed. I liked these particularly because in many cases, this book is the only one these girls are likely to read with this information in it—until the book encourages them to consume other media by women and for women. (My guess is Dee realizes that high school and “teen-oriented” media are much less likely to do it.) Another thing that really strengthens the book is that in each chapter Dee gives practical suggestions for putting her ideas into use. In her chapter on housework, for example, she suggests divvying up housework on a rotating basis so that everyone does all the chores equally or assigning a point value to each chore based on difficulty, with each family member having an equal number of points. And though I find the language in the book a little off-putting (and I acknowledge that it could be how teenagers talk as it’s been a while since I’ve been one), the only major critique I have is that the chapter on school-related sexual harassment is not nearly strong enough. One of the suggestions Dee makes is that a girl being harassed by another (presumably male) student is that she ask him to stop. That seems basic, but it sounds a little cowardly. High school is one of several places where a girl who acts in any way aggressive, like hitting a ball particularly well, is often labeled a “dyke,” as is a girl who refuses the advances of a boy who is interested in her. As such, it sounds like Dee wants girls to avoid this label if they can by starting out in a non-confrontational way. But she acknowledges that sexual harassment, unlike flirting, is not about sex but about power. Given this observation, the best advice to a girl experiencing sexual harassment, is a strong, brook-no-argument STATEMENT (not polite request) for the harassment to stop. If the harasser sees he has not achieved power because of a powerful act on the part of a girl, he is likely to back off. A request to quit, or a letter, if a girl is hesitant to confront a harasser in person(!), does not show a woman’s power; yelling in a harasser’s face is more likely to. Dee also presents “Real-Life Reactions” to three sexual harassment scenarios and, whether she intends to or not, perpetuates the myth that sexual harassment and assault come from mostly from strangers (seventy-eight percent of the time, they don’t) and that it is more acceptable to have a more aggressive reaction to a stranger than to a friend, boyfriend or acquaintance. In one scenario, where a girl is harassed by a man on the street who then begins to follow her, she confronts him face to face, “demanding” to know what he is doing. In the second scenario, however, a girl is pushed against a locker by her boyfriend who cups her breast in his hand while his friend looks on. Her reaction is to tell her boyfriend (later, so that the laddie doesn’t feel embarrassed in front of his buddies) that that made her “uncomfortable” and “asks” him not to do again. In the first scenario, a girl responded aggressively to a stranger who never actually touched her. In the second, a girl submitted to SEXUAL ASSAULT by her boyfriend and later made a polite request for him not to do it again. Hopefully I was not the only person reading the second scenario and wondering why the girl’s knee was not in the groin of her quite-recent ex-boyfriend. Dee recommends additional reading at the end of each chapter, including this one, and I hope the literature she recommends regarding sexual harassment is stronger than what she suggests.
That said, I would pass this book on to teen girls and adults I thought might be interested—with the caveat that I have other reading to help them deal with sexual harassment. Dee’s work is a refreshing take on how to live. And I must raise my hat to an author who writes a work geared toward teen girl audiences that does not have that pervasive—and largely fictitious—male gaze dictating girls’ every move.
November 5, 2022
I read this on a whim and I waited too long to write this review after finishing it. I remember that it had some interesting statistics but also I don't know how relevant the information given is, as it's been like 20 years since this book was published. Information and data has definitely changed since then.
June 17, 2009
I really didn't like this. It wasn't interesting, it "raised" issues I already knew about, and it was determined to say how girls are being wronged.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews