The Great Big Glorious Book for Girls

Roger, you might want to check out the "Hypothetical Dangerous Book for Girls" at Ask Moxie. The Ask Moxie list (comments are also well worth a read) seems way more balanced. I've been half tempted to start a wiki to flesh some of those out. (http://moxie.blogs.com/askmoxie/2007/05/the_hypothetica.html )

I haven't read this yet, but the summary on Amazon makes me doubt that it lives up to it's claim of being to being " great enough to satisfy the whims of diehard tomboys and devoted flower fairies". All things mentioned in the blurb seemed like they appeal only to the "flower fairies".

And re avoiding uncomfortable situations and "non-completion of maths homework".... WTF? On one hand, we want to encourage our girls to become more interested math and science and on the other hand we're telling them to improve their fake fainting skills to deal with not finishing a math homework assignment instead of asking for help if they're having trouble with it?

If I had a daughter, that right there would be enough reason not to buy the book. Being a girl doesn't magically excuse you from responsibility. There are plenty of other places for girls to learn how to do girly things without hearing messages like that. There's Craft magazine ( craftzine.com ), and several books in that niche. We even have women bring their daughters along to StitchNBitch once they're old enough. I also remember doing a ton of crafty things in Girl Scouts.

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Can we give girls a little credit? Don't you think the thing about fainting and math homework might have been a joke? And that our daughters are smart enough to figure that out?

If you are afraid of your daughters seeing gender stereotypes in the books they read, you had better not let them read any classics or any books at all that were written prior to 1970. Seems to me it would be better to just explain to them the historical context of the steretypes or, better yet, give them the benefit of the doubt that they can figure this out for themselves.

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Well, if it was a joke, it was one in poor taste. Girls already get enough "it's ok if you can't do it" when it comes to math and science without throwing more of it on them, even under the guise of a joke.

I currently tutor 3 girls in math (and I also help one with her phsyics) and tutored several others when I was in college through our math department. The current ones are 12, 15, and 16, but I have also tutored women in their 20s and early 30s. While they are not fainting to get out of math|physics homework they didn't do, they did complain of nausea, headaches, cramps, fictional dead great aunts, or pretty much anything they thought might get them out of it. When you're scared of something, it's much easier to use an excuse than figure out how to deal with it.

That's why the math thing bothers me so much. These girls are perfectly capable of doing their math, but they have this block that tells them they can't and asking questions isn't going to help. I don't have a problem with crafting. As I pointed out, there are other places to learn it without feeding a math phobia.

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I think I know more boys who are afraid of math than girls. The difference is that the girls (on average) care more about their academic deficiencies. But that's a different topic for a different day.

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