Jezebel: daring book for girls

Aussies Upset Over Daring Girls' Didgeridoos • UN Says Sexism Rife In The UK

Maria — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 17:30:00 EDT

Indigenous Australian commentators are aghast that the Down Under version of the Daring Book for Girls teaches and encourages girls and young women to learn and play the didgeridoo, an instrument that is taboo for women to even touch.• A woman is suing a UK hospital over a C-section that was performed on her without effective pain relief. • Want to end your marriage? A company Japan employs "professional seducers" to tempt and film the husbands of women who are agitating to get a divorce. •

• A reflexologist in England is on trial for allegedly sexually groping his female patients with his hands and using "illegal" vibrators as medical treatment. • A UN committee says that sexual discrimination against women is strong in the UK where women are underrepresented in Parliament, paid less than men, and being arrested and imprisoned for minor offenses. • A former porn addict and Christian pastor has created a website and number of sermons encouraging worshippers to have great sex because Jesus wants them to. • A new book titled Taking Care Of Your Girls aims to educate young women about breast health to ease fears about breast cancer in the future .• Holly Brudge, a 29-year-old woman from England, plans on becoming the first woman to skydive over Mount Everest. • A couple got married at the Starks and Menchinger Family Funeral Home in Michigan where the bridegroom works as the funeral director. (The couple had to reassure guests that no corpses would be in or near the wedding.) • A reunion of about 100 former Playboy bunnies (the women who worked at Playboy Clubs) took place in Chicago on Monday. Not surprisingly, Gloria Steinem didn't make an appearance. • Puppy videos are back! Watch this little gray Schnauzer play with his beloved toys.

Book For Girls: Dangerous Because It's Not Daring Enough?

dodai — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 16:00:00 EST

When Andrea Buchanan and Miriam Peskowitz saw that HarperCollins published an "old-fashioned" and "politically incorrect" tome called The Dangerous Book For Boys, the ladies contacted the publishing company and asked whether a version for girls was in the works. There wasn't; the women pitched one, and the Daring Book For Girls was born. (The book was first published in October.) But unlike the boy version, which is full of outdoorsy stuff like chipping flint arrowheads and skinning rabbits, Philadelphia magazine's Sandy Hingston notes that the Girls book has pages on knotting friendship bracelets, a diagram of how to do a cartwheel, and recipes for shortbread and fudge. Uh, is that what one calls daring?

It's not all slumber-party games and cootie-catchers, however. There are lists of female inventors, pirates and "modern women leaders." But Buchanan and Peskowitz acknowledge that their book is different from the Boys book, beginning with the title. "'Dangerous,'" Peskowitz says, "has a different connotation for girls. You think of 13-year-olds going off in cars with boys." Notes Hingston: "If girls were buying this book for themselves, I'd be worried. I'd feel that 50 years of rabble-rousing and bouncing off glass ceilings has been in vain." Instead, she realizes, "Well-meaning adults will hand it to girls" and the books will "wind up as relics, sitting on dusty shelves." But why is it that while boys are encouraged to make a bow and arrow, play soccer and build a treehouse, girls are learning how to put their hair up with a pencil? Why aren't girls allowed to be dangerous? And why does danger immediately bring sex to the mind of the author (a mom)?

Society: A Dangerous Book for Girls [Philadelphia]

Earlier: Behind Every Tomboy Is A Blonde, Spoiled Brat