Strong, Smart, and Bold: Empowering Girls for Life (Foreword by Jane Fonda)

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Overview

The pressures a girl experiences growing up today are more intense than ever before. There are gender stereotypes to buck, narrow expectations to contend with, conflicting messages to make sense of. A girl is told that it's important to excel in school and pursue a career, but that she should also keep her voice down, watch her weight, and make sure that everyone else around her is happy.

Strong, Smart, and Bold shows you how to raise a confident, courageous, and self-sufficient girl. Based on the successful approach of Girls Inc., the nation's leading empowerment organization for girls, this book offers proven techniques and compelling success stories to bring out a girl's spirit as early as possible and to give her the self-assurance she needs to thrive in an increasingly complex and pressured world.

Encourage your young woman to find her voice, speak up, and be heard with Strong, Smart, and Bold.

Editorial Reviews

From Barnes & Noble

Readers will gather plenty of fabulous tips for fostering independence, confidence, and a healthy sense of self-esteem in girls from this wonderful book. The book, based upon the Girls' Bill of Rights, outlines how to raise girls who are capable of rejecting gender stereotypes, expressing themselves, taking healthy risks to achieve goals, accepting their bodies, defending themselves, and succeeding in whatever path they choose in life. This is an essential read for parents and educators.

VOYA

Although the phrase "Girl Power" might be out of favor, teaching girls to be proud of who they are and not to give in to stereotypes is a timeless lesson and one that Fine delivers loud and clear. Girls, Inc., a national nonprofit organization that assists girls by giving them the tools they need to make the most of their lives, has created the Girls' Bill of Rights, which states that girls have the right to be safe, successful, comfortable with their bodies, and allowed to say what is on their minds. Fine hits on each of these rights, using passages from well-known books, such as Reviving Ophelia (Grosset/Putnam, 1994/VOYA October 1994), and quotes from adults and girls alike from all walks of life to underscore their importance. The author stresses the need for caring adults in a girl's life, and she adds that this book is for any adult who has constant involvement with a girl—daughter, neighbor, niece, student, or patron. Dealing with girls on a daily basis, this reviewer found personal identification with much of what the author said and with the people quoted. Readers might find themselves engaging in an inner dialogue as they study the suggested exercises included in each chapter. Despite some minor grammatical errors, this book is a must-read for youth professionals of all types, and it is a positive addition to any public library collection. Biblio. Source Notes. Appendix. 2001, Cliff Street/HarperCollins, 203p, $23. Ages Adult. Reviewer: Shari Fesko

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From The Critics

Based on the principles and programs of Girls Inc. (formerly Girls Clubs), Strong, Smart, & Bold provides relevant advice to those who are parenting the 36 million girls of school age in America. Girls Inc. is a national advocacy organization for girls between the ages of six and 18. The title is the motto of Girls Inc., and each chapter is based on one of the principles of the Girls Inc. Bill of Rights: freedom from gender stereotypes and freedom of expression, and the rights to take risks, appreciate their bodies, have confidence, and prepare for work. Many practical exercises are offered to parents and mentors for advancing these ideas, and examples are used throughout, making the text very readable. Because of its exclusive focus on school-age girls, this book fills a niche in the market of parenting books. Appendixes offer resources, web sites, and references. Actress/producer Jane Fonda, chair of the Girls Inc. Rights Campaign, offers a stirring foreword. Recommended. Kay Brodie, Chesapeake Coll., Wye Mills, MD Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780060957476
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date: 3/1/1902
Edition description: REPRINT
Pages: 224
Product dimensions: 5.31 (w) x 8.00 (h) x 0.50 (d)

Meet the Author

Carla Fine is the author of five books, including No Time to Say Goodbye: Surviving the Suicide of a Loved One and Married to Medicine: An Intimate Portrait of Doctors' Wives. She lives in New York City with her husband, Allen Oster, and their two Labrador retrievers, Sancho and Rosie.

Read an Excerpt

Chapter One

Resisting Gender Stereotypes

"Just be proud of your gender. There is no shame in being yourself.

-- Tiffany, Age Sixteen

"I want a bike for my birthday, Mom." A simple enough request, or soJanet thought. Her daughter was turning six and was ready for a two-wheeler. Together, they drove to the toy store at the mall to find one suitable for herphysically active daughter. Janet could still remember her own beloved first bicycle -- jet black with shiny silver handlebars.

The salesperson led them to the bicycle section. "The girls' bikes are in the pink aisle, the boys' are in the blue," she explained.

Janet looked at pink bicycles decorated with bunnies and purple bikes covered with baby lambs. She saw bright yellow pom-poms hanging from handlebars painted cottony white. Curious, she checked out the boys' section. The bikes there were plain and solid: they looked clearly designed to hold up under strenuous use and hard play.

"What about one of these?" Janet asked her daughter.

"No way, Mom," she answered. "I want a pretty bike, like the one Nancy has."

Gender stereotypes are not just about toys and games. From the moment of birth, society treats boys and girls as if they were separate species. A girl is encouraged to be helpful, considerate, and caring; a boy to be tough, competitive, and strong. Sweating and physical exertion, considered unattractive for a girl but manly for a boy, affect the types of games they "should" play -- or the bikes they buy. Gender-based discrirmination not only shapes opportunities and experiences for boys and girls but also affects the way they seethemselves, each other, and their world.

"Leveling the playing field is not just opening more doors for girls and giving equal treatment to girls and boys," says Jan Roberta, senior adviser for institutional advancement for Girls Inc. "It's transforming the way we look at gender as it relates to girls' and boys' development. Barriers and discrimination based on gender directly affect a girl's ability to participate more fully in our society."

The messages that most of us receive and too many of us pass on to girls is that boys and girls think differently, like to do different things, and have different abilities. Girls are nurturing; boys are aggressive. Boys need the lion's share of resources to grow healthy and strong and to develop into good providers and productive members of society; girls need less because they get into less trouble (except for teen pregnancy). Even if a girl pursues a career, it will be secondary to that of her husband and to her role as a mother and wife.

"A girl who learns that football is a boy's game won't sign up for a coed team, especially if she never had the opportunity to practice and develop skills in the sport," says Ms. Roberta. "A girl who is used to seeing adults pay more attention to boys will usually wait for things to quiet down or a boy to finish before speaking up herself. On the other hand, a boy who thinks cooking is for girls most likely won't venture into a class on nutrition, although he would probably love to take a survival class on campfire cooking."

Growing up in a male-dominated culture, many girls face tremendous pressures to conform to damaging notions of femininity that promote passivity and self-sacrifice. A girl learns early on to judge her self-worth according to narrow standards of physical attractiveness and to put the needs of others before her own. As a result, a recent Commonwealth Fund study found that girls are twice as likely as boys to suffer from depression.

"Adolescence is when girls experience social pressure to put aside their authentic selves and to display only a small portion of their gifts," writes Mary Pipher in Reviving Ophelia. "This pressure disorients and depresses most girls because they sense the pressure to be someone they are not."

A girl needs to know her rights, not her role. To that end, a girl needs to know herself. In addition, she must live in an environment that doesn't restrict her because she is female, but respects her for who she is and values her for what she can contribute to society.

Sixty percent of girls in the Girls' Rights Survey said they experience gender stereotypes that limit their right to be themselves. An empowered girl can challenge these limitations and reverse these stereotypes by understanding and exercising her rights, and advocating for the rights of others.

Getting to Know You

The following activities are a good starting point for exploring some of the feelings you experienced when you were growing up: to recall how you felt about the "right" to be yourself, not just who others wanted or expected you to be. By remembering your dreams and aspirations, you can encourage a girl to dream her own dreams and live out her own aspirations.

As you go along, you may find it helpful to jot down some of your thoughts and memories to read over at a later date or share with your daughter or the girl you care about at an appropriate time.

Advice

What is the best advice you ever got from your mother or another important adult in your life when you were growing up?
What is the worst advice you ever got?
What is the best advice you can give to a girl?

Expectations

Complete the following sentence fragments based on what you learned when you were a girl:

Girls are supposed to ...
Girls are not supposed to ...
Boys are supposed to ...
Boys are not supposed to ...

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