Tagged as: girls and women

Let’s Skip the Post-Holiday Fat Talk

Fat talk

‘Tis the season to bash our bodies in front of our daughters, talking obsessively about how many pounds we’ve gained over the holidays and the urgent need to shed them.

Weight loss is a common New Year’s resolution, and one that receives much public discussion. Here’s an idea: Let’s not do that. If we decide to diet and ramp up our exercise regime, we can just do it, but not talk about it around the house. Read more…

Post-Holiday Fat Talk: Let’s Not Do It

Fat talk

Tis the season to bash our bodies in front of our daughters, talking obsessively about how many pounds we’ve gained over the holidays and the urgent need to shed them.

Weight loss is the number one New Year’s resolution, and one that receives much public discussion. Here’s an idea: Let’s not do that. If we decide to diet and ramp up our exercise regime, we can just do it but not talk about it around the house. Read more…

Why I’m Boycotting Movies About Men

war

I’ve obviously gotten radical, stubborn, inflexible, and up-to-my-eyeballs-fed-up with this obscene stage hogging, and am in desperate need of a shepherd’s crook to remove superfluous male bodies from the world’s movie sets. I’ve spent half a century watching films that are by, for, and about men. I’ve paid too much of my hard-earned money supporting a fantasy world where half the human population has gone missing. Read more…

Why I Am Boycotting Movies About Men

boycotting

I’ve obviously gotten radical, stubborn, inflexible and up-to-my-eyeballs-fed-up with this obscene stage hogging, and am in desperate need of a shepherd’s crook to remove superfluous male bodies from the world’s movie sets. I’ve spent half a century watching films that are by, for, and about men. I’ve paid too much of my hard-earned money supporting a fantasy world where half the human population has gone missing. Read more…

Please Support SheHeroes as They Seek Funds to Launch a New Web Series for Girls!

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Given the recent debacle that we discussed at length on the Her Next Chapter Facebook page about the Barbie book (where she wants to be a computer engineer but needs boys to help her code and deal with viruses,) don’t we want better for our girls? I’m going to tell you about a way that you can help subvert these kinds of messages about girls.

Physicist and astronaut Sally Ride once said: “Young girls need to see role models in whatever careers they may choose, just so they can picture themselves doing those jobs someday. You can’t be what you can’t see.” This is precisely the philosophy of SheHeroes, a non-profit organization focused on inspiring and empowering girls, ages 8-14, to pursue non-traditional careers. Originally founded by three women from MIT, SheHeroes has an all-female team that produces web videos profiling women who are powerful leaders in their respective fields. Read more…

The Problem With Saying ‘All Women Are Beautiful’

bunch of women

Women of all ages, races, body types, and occupations can now show society that they are equally deserving of being objectified—not just the young, thin, white hotties who typically get that special honor. Today, if you’re female, you’re never too old, too large, or too anything to be photographed or painted while naked or scantily clad, and duly lauded for your physical attributes. Hooray! Read more…

Old Men and Plus-Sized Men Can Be Sexy Too. Said No One Ever.

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Women of all ages, races, body types, and occupations can now show society that they are equally deserving of being objectified — not just the young, thin, white hotties who typically get that special honor. Today, if you’re female, you’re never too old, too large, or too anything to be photographed or painted while naked or scantily clad, and duly lauded for your physical attributes. Hooray! Read more…

Please Do Not Comment On My Bitchy Resting Face

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When I turned 50, one of the thoughts I had was like hell will I ever write anything for Huff/Post50. And that right there is the problem. I’m finally over it.

I’m over it because it’s time to walk the walk. I write a lot about the intersection of misogyny and ageism — that special bias that starts affecting women in the prime of their lives. I like to imagine I am immune to any assault on my own self-esteem, even though I know the Third-Person Effect is very real and I have no unique super powers that allow me to remain psychologically untouched by media. Right now I am struggling with how my face looks at rest. You may know it as Bitchy Resting Face, and I’ve come to call it BRFS, like it’s a syndrome. Read more…

When Facebook friends Become Real Life Friends

Facebook friends

I am happily married today because of my computer. Well, partly! The cyberworld brought me the husband that I could never have found in any other way. I should write Match.com into my will.

When I think about why online dating succeeded while being set up by my friends failed, it’s because I knew myself and what I wanted in a man the second time around better than my friends did, and I’m not sure I could have articulated my wishes even if I’d wanted to, which I didn’t. What was important to me at that time in my life was so different than what was important to those friends or what they assumed would naturally still be important to me. Read more…

GIVEAWAY: The Good Mother Myth

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Motherhood did not arrive easily. As one of the early IVF pioneers in the 80’s, I fought tooth and nail for it. It took many years, many surgeries, many assisted reproductive technologies, and a whole lot of grit. In 1991 my daughter Charlotte was born, and she was a miracle, as all of our children are. But the truth is that I always felt I had tempted fate—in getting pregnant at all, in delivering a healthy baby after a high-risk pregnancy and difficult labor, and in almost losing her shortly after she was born…but bringing her home  from the NICU a few days later with her doctors’ blessings. Read more…

Picture Books Featuring Girls — For Children Under Six

Afghanistan

Happy Mother’s Day to the Her Next Chapter Facebook community!

Charlotte and I have a gift for you all, and a gift for girls all over the world. Recently I asked you all for recommendations of books for girls under 6 that feature strong female protagonists, and I was amazed at how many suggestions you all made. You really are a village to one another, and have as much to learn from each other as from me…and in the case of books for younger girls, even more so! So I thank you for the wonderful recommendations. Charlotte compiled them all, and I give them back to you in this blog post, which will be a living document on my blog on my website at www.motherdaughterbookclubs.com. If anyone has more books to add, let me know and I’ll add them. Read more…

The Amazing Impact of Mother-Daughter Book Clubs

Life above all

One of the most fulfilling and most memorable undertakings of my parenting journey was the formation of a mother-daughter book club, a collaboration with my then-eight-year-old daughter and four other mother-daughter pairs that would last for six years. We all discussed the need to counteract stereotyped and sexualized girl culture with positive messages about who girls and women really are and what they can do.Read more…

5 must-see movies for tween girls

The recent success of Brave and Frozen demonstrates that movies starring girls can not only succeed, but can also dominate at the box office. For much too long, the common belief among producers has been that female protagonists doom a movies to commercial failure because boys won’t go see it. But, good news! This idea is fast becoming urban legend! After watching many children’s movies to curate recommendations for mother-daughter book clubs, I discovered that many great movies starring girls have been there all along. Here are five of the best. Read more…

Eight Favorite Books Starring Interesting, Exciting, Daring, Adventurous Girls!

Google is full of girl-empowering book lists. Favorite female protagonists from the classics, like Pippi Longstocking, to more recent heroines, like Katniss Everdeen, abound on these lists, but I wanted to make my own after reading so many children and YA books to curate for recommendations to mother-daughter book clubs. Here are eight of my favorites, and there’s no better way to raise interesting, exciting, daring and adventurous daughters! Read more…

Eight Favorite Books Starring Interesting, Exciting, Daring, Adventurous Girls!

girl on leather couch reading

Google is full of lists recommending girl-empowering books. Favorite female protagonists from the classics, like Pippi Longstocking, to more recent heroines, like Katniss Everdeen, abound on these lists, but I wanted to make my own after reading so many children’s and YA books to curate for recommendations in my book Her Next Chapter.  Here are a few of my favorites, and why I liked them. These all come with original discussion guides in my book, so if you’ve got a mother-daughter book club and any of these pique your interest, you’ll be all set! Or, read these books with your daughters at home and be a book club of two! Read more…

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