Writes Judith Warner, after remembering a painful few years of early-teen cruelty,

In fiction. It's what I hope my next book project will be, you see: a tween time-travel novel set in 1977, when there really was a roller rink on Waverly Place, and I was in 7th grade...The book is ostensibly all about a daughter's learning that she can't meddle in her mother's (past) life; she has to let her have bad experiences and grow up to be who she is destined to be. But it's not coincidental that, in the course of learning these lessons, my fictional daughter lives in a world completely controlled, defined and circumscribed by me.

What's as interesting as Warner's interesting piece is the reaction from readers: the comments section is filled with stories of well-remembered pain and a sense of its injustice that never goes away, even if it fades. (That headline quote comes from one of these readers.) There's something about that age, on the cusp of childhood, that's particularly vulnerable. (There's a reason they made a movie, 13, abut this very period.) Yesterday, talking about Tavi the pre-teen blogger, we editors reminisced about our own 13-year-old accomplishments and the wondrous potential of that age. In fact, it's a time I try to avoid thinking about, since it's when the cozy cocoon of childhood broke and I found myself the target of casual mockery on a daily basis. It's funny: I had not acknowledged that for years; I'd blocked 7th grade completely from my consciousness. But it's when I went from self-assured and oblivious to aware that I was unattractive and tiny and ridiculous with my piping voice and big vocabulary. I remember primarily a sense of bewildered inadequacy, a wish to go unnoticed in the halls or the lunchroom and avoid a jibe or a throwaway remark that my antagonists surely forgot as soon as I was out of sight. Most people didn't bother to be cruel, but there were enough. I'm reminded, if forced to think about that time, of the humiliating day when it all became too much and I broke down sobbing in class and was sent home, a victim. And I cease to feel like a normal-looking adult with a career and a basically-average height, and become a nonentity. This isn't even a particularly traumatic case - it's more average than not. Certainly not a horror story, and no cousin to the very real tragedies that we see week after week. But even now, thinking of those days of timing my trips through the halls so as to avoid other kids, or slipping into a seat just as class started so no one would have a chance to make fun of me, causes the base of my skull to tighten with a well-remembered tension.

Warner wishes both to spare her daughter that pain and reconnect with her younger self, and she's clearly not alone: when one looks at the adult women questioning the work of a 13-year-old girl, it's hard not to wonder if they, too, have scars dating back to that age. And wondering, per that commenter's remark, where they and so many other successful women fell on the bullying/victim spectrum.

40 Is Not The New 12 [NY Times]

Earlier: Elle Editor Leads Backlash Against 13-Year-Old Fashion Blogger

He wonders how to reconcile the two contradictory feelings, saying:

Fighting is bad. But I couldn't help but be filled with pride if No. 07 were my daughter whomping the crud out of a male hockey player who tried to push her around. Is this the same sort of mixed signal like how guns are bad, but a gun in the hand of a woman is empowering?

Cook's feelings are quite common. Due to defined roles for women, it's tempting to respond to anything that makes women seem like they are breaking down barriers. Pride at seeing a girl "whomping the crud" out of male players symbolizes three different things.

The first thing is that she is good enough to be able to participate on the same field as boys. One of the arguments for gender segregated sports teams is that women cannot physically perform at the level of men, so the fact that a woman is playing in the same rink is a big deal.

Secondly, it demonstrates that she is a full participant in a space usually dominated by males - as the boys do, she does.

Third, it shows her willingness to defend that space (i.e. not take shit). The video contains graphic notations as to where she is being pushed around by the other players, and the fact that she was able to brush herself off and bring the fight right back does exhibit an indication of her being on equal footing.

Where Cook feels conflicted, however, is a longstanding item of contention. Does this encouragement of women to defy gender roles and fight for their space still hold when they're doing something potentially harmful to others? I am not familiar enough with ice hockey to know if there is a movement of any sort to stop fighting on the ice. From the few matches I've watched, I received the impression that altercations are to be expected.

Interestingly, the reaction this video prompts is different from the one soccer player Elizabeth Lambert received when she exhibited aggression on a field of peers. She was playing in a female- dominated soccer environment and her confrontational style of play (in addition to a ponytail yank, among other things) prompted her suspension earlier this year. But one of the major differences between the two situations is the context in which the behavior occurred.

In Player Number 7's case, she was well within the bounds and conventions of the game she played. With Lambert, her behavior was unsportwomanlike, and not really worth applauding - even if she was behaving just as aggressively as a male soccer player would.

Just because men get away with horrible behaviors, it doesn't mean we should applaud when women do the same. And so, in this case, Cook shouldn't feel conflicted - it's fine to be proud. But if player number 7 decided to take the fight off the ice, it wouldn't be commendable - just violent.

Girl Beats Up Boys In High School Hockey Fight [True/Slant]

Earlier: Violence In Sports: Suspended Soccer Player Speaks Out

After referring to the (relative) success of those in the gay-rights movement who directly link their political dollars to political action, Hirshman seethes over the fact that while Stupak passed,

we do not hear that Denise Abrams, Anne Abramson, Elizabeth Alter or Amy Stan — just to take the first names on the list — have threatened to withhold further $28,500 maximum contributions until the representatives stop the barefoot-and-pregnant campaign.

She continues:

Why won't women take a lesson from the bold voices of the gay movement? It cannot be that women think their contributions aren't large enough to pose a credible threat. Not only did women number heavily among the max givers to the DCCC, but they also accounted for 42 percent of the donations to the presidential campaign, a whopping $145 million. By contrast (although statistics for the heterosexuality of donors are not kept and strategic gay donors are clearly giving in ways that do not show up on surveys) we do know that during the primary, Barack Obama raised about $1.7 million, or about 3 percent of his contributions to date, from the gayest ZIP codes in the country. But that didn't stop the gay activists from raising the ante on him when they thought he was screwing them over.

Hirshman's piece reminds me an argument I hate when people who try to make a connection about other groups and organizing: no coalition is perfect, and it can take years of dedicated organizing (along with continued slights from the majority) to galvanize enough people to take action. There is an idea that I have heard pushed in feminist circles that "the blacks," "the gays" and other minority groups seem to have some inner organizing/hellraising gene that women do not possess. "This would never happen to black people!" they huff, "they wouldn't get away with it!"

But, like all notions of a movement from the outside, things are different from how they appear. There are breaks, protests, and counter-protests within any minority group, and it can take a long, long time to get enough people to agree there is even a problem that needs a solution. Linda Hirschman stumbles by using a blanket analysis - she rails at women voters, and assumes they all have the same goals. But which women is she talking about? Pro-life women who vote democratically? Women who are not feminists who vote dem? Women who, like many women columnists and pundits, feel that this hit is worth taking in order to get health care reform?

While I agree with the overall thrust of Hirshman's piece - that women joining a coalition need to constantly evaluate whether this coalition values them as participants or just happily pockets their money and votes - her cause and effect based analysis leaves me cold. To solve such issues, activists need to figure out why more people do not demand more of their political representatives in the first place, and what motivates donors and voters before assuming they'll automatically lean one way or another based on their gender.

Don't Just Swallow It [Salon]

According to the study, no. British researchers looked at 17,000 adults, all born in the same week in 1958. Men who had attended single-sex schools as children were more likely to divorce or separate from a partner by their early 40s than those who went to coed institutions. And men educated in single-sex environments were more likely to suffer depression or "a sense of malaise." Girls, however, did not appear to feel these adverse effects. Mary Bousted of the UK's Association of Teachers and Lecturers responded thus:

All the research shows single-sex schools are good for girls but bad for boys – both in terms of academic performance and socialisation. Girls seem to learn what the nature of the beast is if they have been to single sex schools whereas boys taught on their own seem to find girls more puzzling. Boys learn better when they are with girls and they actually learn to get on better.

As Bousted's "nature of the beast" comment shows, it's easy to inject anecdotal evidence into the single-sex schooling debate, and such evidence can easily turn to gender stereotype. For my part, boys I've known who had close female friends growing up — in school or out — tend to be more feminist and generally more comfortable around women. But it's hard to assign causality here — boys who are naturally well-disposed towards girls probably tend to have more of them as friends. And while I can certainly buy that being socialized with girls from an early age helps boys with relationships later in life, I'm not sure that girls are naturally "puzzling" while boys are easy to figure out. I wonder if the kind of school students attended affected the results — some were educated privately, some publicly, and it's not clear if researchers controlled for this. I also wonder if girls reap benefits from co-ed schooling that were outside the scope of the study. Lucy Hodges, editor of the Independent's education supplement, thinks they do. She writes,

As someone who was educated in a single-sex boarding school I believe my schooling might have been improved if I had spent it in the company of boys as well as girls. It would certainly have provided some welcome distraction in lessons. Instead of reading Georgette Heyer all the way through Latin and maths, I could have been making eyes at a real-life hero a few yards away and even had some improving discussions with him about my algebra prep. As it was, I didn't really get to know a youth who wasn't in a book until I arrived at university at the tender age of 17-and-a-half.

The relationship-building implications of single-sex schooling for heterosexual girls aren't totally trivial, but it's kind of unfortunate that Hodges chooses to frame them in terms of their dubious educational benefit. She also says that her daughter "would have been better off, certainly at sixth-form, at a school with some boys – and a few more male teachers – to bring a bit of spice and interest to her life." The idea that girls need sexual excitement to perform well in school is kind of depressing — can't academic subjects add "spice and interest" to life?

I'm not convinced that the excitement of the opposite sex helps hetero kids learn math. But it does seem logical that, regardless of sexual orientation, children learn social lessons from opposite sex peers. Potential confounding variables aside, it is possible that boys learn more valuable lessons than girls, or at least different ones. They may learn that girls share their interests and goals, that they can be smart and funny and fast and cool, and — most importantly — that they are people worthy of attention and consideration. Girls probably learn the same things about boys, but they may also learn that some boys don't like it when they speak up, or that some teachers have different expectations of them because of their gender. These lessons may be damaging to girls, and single-sex education may shield them from this damage for a time. But if it's true that sex segregation hampers boys' ability to relate to girls and later to women, that's not good for either gender. Single-sex education has benefits for many people, but it's not a gender-relations panacea — if we want boys and girls to grow up free of prejudice, we may ultimately need to pay more attention to what we're teaching them than to whether we're teaching them together.

Why Single-Sex Schools Are Bad For Your Health (If You're A Boy) [Independent]
Lucy Hodges: The Perils Of Single-Sex Education [Independent]

The MSNBC headline really says it all: "It's a boy? Disappointment plagues some moms." Of course, "gender disappointment" exists (as we know) in both forms. But for mothers who've been dreaming of girly bonding - or those, like my grandmother, who have four boys - the boy regret is apparently more common. As one mother quoted in the piece puts it, "There's not going to be any pink dresses. There's not going to be any scrapbooking. That's not going to happen."

Therapists quoted in the piece recommend that those who are super hung up on one sex find out in advance so as to deal with the disappointment. And now there's a resource: Altered Dreams: Living with Gender Disappointment, written by one mom whose sons will, hopefully, never check Amazon. I mean, surely at some point "gender disappointment" turns into "having a baby boy," right? This isn't the 19th century, where a father can't look at a girl without seeing the heir she should have been. And the moms quoted in the piece are sure to affirm that they love their sons, even if one of them "sometimes looks at her son and wonders, just for a moment, what he would look like as a girl." Well, if she's really curious, she can do what one of my friend's mothers did: dress him in dresses and bonnets because, dammit, she wasn't going to be cheated out of the pink.

It's A Boy? Disappointment Plagues Some Moms [MSNBC]

Car repair? That's for boys. That look on his face says: "I'm thinking about overcharging you."

Cooking and cleaning? That's for girls. The young lady on the left might also be discovering that a frying pan can double as a weapon, but that's for advanced users.

Grilling? That's for boys. Even though cooking on a stove is for girls, if you cook with fire, you're following our ancestor, Homo Erectus. Early Man, not Early Woman!

Playing with your food is something both girls and boys can do; although only girls work at McDonald's.

Related: When I was four, I loved McDonald's intensely and thought it was a burger and shake heaven on earth. So when a teacher asked me — the only black kid in my pre-k class — what I wanted to do when I grew up, I said "work at McDonald's." My mom witnessed this interaction and, I think, almost died of disappointment.

Being a pretty princess, wearing make-up and jewelry? That's for girls.

And just because you're a princess doesn't mean you shouldn't bake, make toast or blend a smoothie. Duh. That's what girls do.

A plush pet condo, for girls ages 2 and up. Because it's never too early to be a crazy cat lady!

Something all girls look forward to: Graduating from a baking princess to a Queen Of Clean. Maybe someday she'll be in one of those sad mop commercials Sarah Haskins is always making fun of.

Don't tell Danica Patrick, but car racing is for boys. Falling in love is for girls.

Sports are for boys.

Except soccer. Girls can play soccer. And whatever that other thing is.

OMG progress: Girls can be doctors! Or star in primetime medical dramas!

But boys can be paleontologists, truckers, law enforcement officials or doctors.

Lilly's Kids [Official Site]

Earlier: All previous catalog posts

The piece explains:

It is rarely good to be female anywhere in the developing world today, but in India and China the situation is dire: in those countries, more than 1.5 million fewer girls are born each year than demographics would predict, and more girls die before they turn 5 than would be expected. (In China in 2007, there were 1.73 million births - and a million missing girls.) Millions more grow up stunted, physically and intellectually, because they are denied the health care and the education that their brothers receive.

The missing girls phenomenon sounds a bit misleading - it holds the connotation of girls who were born and have disappeared. But this crisis speaks to women who were not given a fair chance at life, either through neglect, infanticide, or gender-specific foeticide. The sad reality researchers uncovered can be summarized thusly:

Nor does a rise in a woman's autonomy or power in the family necessarily counteract prejudice against girls. Researchers at the International Food Policy Research Institute have found that while increasing women's decision-making power would reduce discrimination against girls in some parts of South Asia, it would make things worse in the north and west of India. "When women's power is increased," wrote Lisa C. Smith and Elizabeth M. Byron, "they use it to favor boys."

Since many of the cultural traditions favoring boys were rooted in economic necessity or ideas about the afterlife and blessings, many researchers assumed that the problem would be solved alongside the modernization of these nations. However, this has not been the case - apparently, the problem is the worst in some of the wealthiest and most educated districts in China and India, and has even carried over to impact the population of girls in communities who have migrated to the West.

Researchers note:

What Das Gupta discovered is that wealthier and more educated women face this same imperative to have boys as uneducated poor women - but they have smaller families, thus increasing the felt urgency of each birth. In a family that expects to have seven children, the birth of a girl is a disappointment; in a family that anticipates only two or three children, it is a tragedy.

Thus development can worsen, not improve, traditional discrimination.

There is no easy answer to this predicament. While targeted outreach may work, attitudes are slow to change. Even as we see immediate consequences of these decisions (like the issue of bride trafficking, which is a significant problem in multiple nations,) traditions can be slow to overcome. However, the tide may be changing in many areas. In India, officials are celebrating that for the first time in decades, more girls were born than boys in 2008, a direct outgrowth of government campaigns to curb infanticide.

But a more permanent solution would be for people to take an active role in promoting women's equality and stressing that young girls are just as wise of an investment as young boys.

The Daughter Deficit [NY Times]
The bride was 7 [Chicago Tribune]
In India, girls begin to outnumber the boys [The Independent]

So, as we know, Miley Cyrus pole-danced at the Teen Choice Awards. Or, rather, she leapt up onto an ice cream cart with a pole in the middle and executed a single shimmy, obviously pole-dance inspired. Then she got down.

The dance itself wasn't that big a deal; yeah, it was completely inappropriate for a show that targets kids (because I think real "Teens" have moved on by this point), but not especially more so than her minute booty shorts or the parade of scantily-dressed dancers grinding behind her. It was, as the Examiner blog points out, a whole lot less raunchy than the pole-dance 'Fire Burning' number co-performer Sean Kingston indulged in.

Kingston is only 19, three years older than Cyrus, and he had not one but two poles. He also had two very scantily-clad ladies dancing around those poles with moves that were much more provocative than Cyrus's one shimmy. So why then is only Cyrus getting called out her inappropriate dancing and for using a pole in her performance, whereas no one is blinking an eye at Kingston's very sexy, very racy stage outing? Double standards, anyone?

Well, sure - and Scores doesn't seem to be clutching its pearl G-string over his two-pronged approach - but it's also true that Cyrus made her name as a good girl, has very young fans, and has recently started a spate of deliberate provocation: far from the remorse she espoused after last year's Vanity Fair fracas, now Cyrus is defiantly making her mark as an older entertainer, posing on the cover of magazines in overtly sexy getups and, yes, thumbing her nose at us fogeys with that half-assed gyrations.

Yes, she's just a kid. There were choreographers who put it together and parents who sanctioned it and managers who thought it was a good move, or at least trusted a 16-year-old's judgment. She doesn't deserve anyone's hate mail or the blame for society's ills. Maybe people are pissed off about it because a) it's August and people enjoy histrionics and b)now it feels deliberate. The Vanity Fair thing, most of us didn't mind: whatever, she was in over her head, it was Leibovitz, weird call on dad's part but really what's the big deal? But now, she's trying to throw off the yoke of exactly what made her famous, and while I understand chafing at Disney's stranglehold, it also feels, well, unfair to those little girls who look up to her. And she's playing deliberately with the clean Hannah Montana image that made her big. Says Salon's Tracy Clark-Flory,

That's some potent imagery: an emblem of childhood (an ice cream cart) juxtaposed with a symbol of modern young womanhood (a stripper pole). Looks like her managers are following the Britney Spears sexy-virgin path to success — or self-destruction, depending on your perspective.

Was the dance a big deal? Not in itself - it's short, not especially sexy, and frankly the song she was caterwauling was unlistenable. But will it negatively influence little girls? Frankly, I seriously hope most little girls weren't allowed to watch it, because it sucked, and the entire show was completely inappropriate. I maintain that girls are smarter than they're generally given credit for being, however impressionable their age, and that the behavior of one already-tarnished TV star isn't going to change the course of their lives.

But it does kind of depress me, because this is obviously what Miley Cyrus and her handlers/parents want for her, and for her career. I'm depressed for all the usual reasons - sexualization and cheapening and objectification and growing up too fast, and the lack of wholesome role models - but I think it's something more. I'm offended on behalf of little girls. Being a role model whom younger children look up to is not second-class. It's not a necessary minor-league servitude before the big leagues. It's not less important than attracting their older sisters. (It's certainly not less renumerative.) No, being a role model, someone who has the influence to touch and influence younger girls at a formative age, is an honor, and it's not an honor a lot of people are accorded. When I saw Miley Cyrus on that crummy pole, my heart sank a little: because, once again, she was saying that what she does, and her market, isn't important and she's eager to leave it behind. I get that for a young girl playing to kids doesn't feel sexy or glamorous, and it's natural to be rebellious. It's why kids shouldn't be in the public eye, arguably, in the first place - they have no control over what they're getting themselves into, and then, inevitably, they resent the pressures. That's sad for a lot of reasons, but not least because it plays havoc with the young girls whom Miley's growing up and abandoning, rather than the other way around.

(Oh, and in case you're wondering, here's what "Ed Norwick, General Manager of SCORES, the legendary NYC gentleman's club" had to say: "While Miley did show off some skills, we at SCORES cannot encourage this kind of behavior for women under the legal age. If she'd like to come try out in a couple of years, our door's open!")

Miley Cyrus, 16, Shows Off Her Pole Dancing Skills At The Teen Choice Awards [Daily Mail]

Miley Cyrus: Too Young To Pole Dance? [Salon]
Miley Cyrus Vs. Sean Kingston: It's A Stripper Pole Dance-Off At The Teen Choice Awards [Examiner]
"Party In The USA" At The Teen Choice Awards (FULL VERSION)(HQ) [YouTube]

Lisa Ling, also a journalist, has been referring to her sister and her friend Euna as "girls" in public statements for several weeks. She told the May 31 edition of People, "We desperately hope that at the conclusion of the June 4 trial, the government of North Korea will show clemency and allow the girls to return home to their families. [...] We would like to thank all of those individuals who are organizing to secure the release of the girls." But her use of the word has intensified in a PR blitz following new claims by the North Korean government that Ling and Lee have confessed to intentionally crossing into North Korea to record footage for a "smear campaign" against the country.

On this morning's Today show, Ling said, "it was obvious that the girls confessed to the charges that were levied against them [...] we now hope that the North Korean government will show compassion and allow the girls to come home." And on CNN last night, she called Ling and Lee "girls" at least six times. She reiterated that, "the girls have admitted to whatever charges were levied against them" adding, "we now hope that the North Korean government will just show compassion and leniency and let the girls come home." Asked if she had any message for Ling and Lee, she said,

I would just tell the girls to please stay strong, and know that we are trying to do everything we can, our government is trying to do everything they can, to try and bring them home, and just focus on the day when we can all be together again, is what I would say to the girls.

Laura Ling's cousin Angie Wang also called the two detained journalists "girls" on CBS this omrning, perhaps suggesting a family-wide rhetorical decision. It's possible that the family believe that referring to the journalists as "girls" rather than "women" will make them less threatening to the North Korean government, and perhaps more deserving of compassion and forgiveness. Repeatedly saying "girls" probably goes against much of Ling's journalistic training — in most of her professional TV appearances, the word "women" would be more appropriate — so her choice seems especially conscious.

All of Ling and Lee's supporters appear to be choosing their words extremely carefully to avoid offending the North Korean government and make a quick release more likely. North Korea's claims are bizarre — it says Ling and Lee have confessed to "criminal acts ... prompted by the political motive to isolate and stifle the socialist system of the DPRK by faking up moving images aimed at falsifying its human rights performance and hurling slanders and calumnies at it" — and any confession seems likely to have been obtained under duress if it was obtained at all. But the families of the journalists have studiously avoided criticizing North Korea or questioning the confession in any way. They merely reiterate that the "girls" are "sorry," and ask North Korea to relent and send them home.

It's interesting that supporters of Ling and Lee have this particular rhetorical tool at their disposal. If the detained journalists were men, no one could ask North Korea to release the "boys." Of course, it's not uncommon to refer to grown women as girls — we've certainly done it, particularly in pop culture stories. Still, the fact that women can still be infantilized well into their thirties, when they have families and established careers, is ordinarily an unfortunate one. In this case, however, if calling Laura Ling and Euna Lee "girls" helps get them home faster, we can't help but support it.

Thanks to video intern Joanna Farah for putting together the clip.

Jailed Journalist's Sister: Show Compassion [Today Show]
Video: Families Plead With North Korea [CNN]
Journalist's Family Speaks [CBS]
N. Korea: U.S. Journalists Were Creating 'Smear Campaign' [CNN]
Families Hold Out Hope For Journalists Detained In North Korea [ABC]

Says Maclean's:

The goal of Make-over Camp is to instill poise, grace and confidence in girls between the ages of 10 and 14. For two weeks, they will learn to improve their posture, voice, table manners, conversation skills, wardrobe choices, makeup application, hostessing skills and music appreciation. "We see a lot of young ladies who can benefit from a makeover program," said Angela Chan, director of Lambda and co-creator of the camp. "They need to develop their presence." Marc McCreavy, an industrial designer and interior decorator, will teach the girls how to host events and decorate a table. "It's important to learn about appropriate topics of conversation and appropriate attire," he said.

Concert pianist Wonny Song was inspired to found Make-over Camp after meeting a particularly poised 13-year-old at a Parisian soiree who assisted her parents with hosting and generally conducted herself with poise and maturity. Song wanted to inspire more young women to learn this self-confidence and these waning social graces. Why she interpreted this as needing a finishing school is totally mysterious.

And, not shockingly, many in Song's native Montreal are less than enthused about the concept, dubbing it "charm school," "wife camp," and all kinds of evil. Says one McGill professor, "I'm sorry, but I cannot call a charm school feminist... Yes, young girls lack confidence, as we know from studies and books about the Ophelia complex, but the way to solve it isn't to teach them how to be good hostesses!" Adds an irate mother, "It reinforces old, gendered expectations about ladylike behaviour...Reverting to that 1950s model of repressed housewives is a way of responding to the crisis of the average household-fractured by divorce and busy schedules."

Okay, bashing this ludicrous camp is almost too easy, so I'll save you the virtual ink. And here's the thing: a lot of what this camp teaches is important. Manners, social skills, poise - these are life skills, and ones that help increase self-confidence. The accomplishments that Song seems to have admired in that French girl - that of a young woman who can hold her own with adults, engage with them, look them in the eye - had next to nothing to do with "makeup application" or "table settings."

It's tragic that the only time we hear about stuff like manners or confident interaction with adults, they're being lumped in with such retrograde silliness, and approached in such an offensive and old-fashioned way. Because not only do these undermine the real lessons girls could be learning, but they allow people to dismiss this silly program out of hand, and ignore the few very real good things it emphasizes. This camp is at best silly, at worst offensive, and thanks to its charm-school absurdity, and its equation of "confidence" with "50s-style polish," pretty much wholly irrelevant. But it seems to me sad that genuine manners and social skills, which aren't silly, are being lumped in with it, and as a result dismissed. In essence: Song is totally wrong. But within that, there's a little right, and now no one will see that.

I'm not worried this is going to become some kind of revolution, because it's too absurd, and because it's a self-selecting parental population anyway. I also believe that a smart girl who ends up in such a place won't be brain-washed, because I happen to think more of young girls than The Media cares to. But I worry that between her reactionary exercise in charm and the reflexive 50's-bashing that's become one of the most irritating shorthand of modern rhetoric, we're missing a chance to talk about the fact that actual "poise and confidence" are traits that have absolutely nothing to do with makeup or makeovers - but can be taught and encouraged by treating young women with respect and dignity - and may have more modern application than either camp (pun intended) is acknowledging.

It's ‘Wife Camp' For 10-Year-o=Olds [Macleans]

There's definitely something weird going on. Sure, little girls have always been plied with pink princesses, but this used to mean handsome princes and gowns, not some kind of entitlement to homage. The more conscientious amongst us could certainly call this a lateral move, but noted husband-supporter Megan Basham worries in the Wall Street Journal that the "every girl's a princess" ethos is leading to a rash of lady-narcissism.

Basham cites the rash of Super Sweet 16s, "Juicy Couture Princess" shirts and "princess makeovers" involving tube tops and makeup, the racks of entitled-skanky-baby gear in every mall. Oh, and did we mention the sinister "Christian Princess" trend? "Christian retail outlets like A Different Direction carry "God's Girlz," glamour dolls dressed in princess shirts and spandex with sparkling tiaras on their heads. And check out the church-apropos tee bearing the words, '"Yes, I am a Princess." The small print underneath: "I'm a daughter of the King."'

Says Basham,

Maintaining a diva daughter has become one more way to one-up the Joneses...Now researchers are finding that parents are promoting attitudes of superiority in their daughters. Jean Twenge, associate professor of psychology at San Diego State University, tracks the rising egotism on college campuses in her new book, "The Narcissism Epidemic: Living in the Age of Entitlement." She has found that college-age women are developing narcissistic traits at four times the rate of college-age men. She attributes the startling discrepancy in part to parents who put their girls on a pedestal.

This arouses very mixed feelings. On the one hand, we are glad girls have healthy egos and are made to feel worthwhile; but the point of Twenge's book is to distinguish between self-esteem and narcissism. And Twenge's hypothesis is controversial; other studies have found that narcissism is no greater than it was 30 years ago - it's just manifested in more aggressive, pinker ways. Or, as Dr. Drew would have it, being encouraged by celebrity culture. But is that even the issue? Whether we're more narcissistic or just more blatant about displaying it, it's really not about "putting girls on a pedestal," it's encouraging a sense of worth and entitlement based on what used to be considered unattractive behavior - or at least the domain of opera legends of a certain age. What does it even mean to be a "diva" or a "princess?" That you're pampered and entitled? Well-groomed? It's distressing less as a manifestation of narcissism than as a focus on the wrong things.

But that said, Basham's argument rankles. She's not who we want to hear this from - you'd better believe she'd like to see more selflessness and humility! If young women are becoming "narcissists" it seems like it's at least partially because a culture of objectification that values the trophy wife or girlfriend. And while young women may meet a more obvious, Fendi-toting definition of classic narcissistic materialism, Twenge's book also cites the rising narcissism epidemic - among men, primarily - as the cause of the financial and mortgage crises. Besides, whatever the levels of campus narcissism, one can certainly argue that these young women have far less to do with determining cultural direction than a few narcissistic adults, mainly men. By definition, an obviously "princess" is not going to do as much to influence the world's course - more's the pity.

Is it naive to hope that this ethos is a leftover from pre-Recession? Even in my own generation, now pushing thirty, there's a pernicious sense of being entitled to everything - yet having nothing to prove. We are all safe in the knowledge of our own vague "specialness" regardless of the outcome, and the buck doesn't tend to stop at our own failures. In this regard, although it's horrible, the current economy may prove a boon in some ways: I've spoken to a lot of friends who, while they obviously deplore the pain and difficulty of the current situation, recognize that, as one friend put it, "it's the first test we've really had." And how much more true will this be of children growing up in its shadow? Okay, maybe not for the "baby bitch."

Bringing Up Princess: Turning Girls Into Narcissists [Wall Street Journal]
Narcissism Epidemic: Why There Are So Many Narcissists Now [Us News]
Narcissism Epidemic Blamed for Economic Woes [NBC]
Is Narcissism On The Upswing In The Young? Studies Disagree [USA Today]

Earlier: Beside Every Great Pile Of Bullshit, Or: Crap Book From A Chick

Thirty six-month-old children were shown a pink doll and a blue truck. With new eye tracking technology, scientists found that while boys and girls both looked at the doll more than at the truck, girls looked at the doll more than boys did, whereas boys looked at the truck more than girls. According to Dave Munger at Cognitive Daily,

The researchers say babies this young don't have the motor skills to actually play with these toys, so the result must be due to different visual preferences in boys and girls. Arguably, babies at this age don't have any opinion about gender roles and don't even particularly distinguish between genders, so social influences must not be responsible for this difference.

Munger, however, is skeptical. He writes,

Personally, I'm not so sure I'm convinced by the researchers' logic. Little girls are dressed in pink and boys are dressed in blue from a very young age. Girls are given dolls and boys are given trucks, so whether the babies are conscious of gender roles or are able to physically interact with these toys, they have been exposed to them more or less based on their gender.

Eric Berger of SciGuy adds, "I think the study might have been more persuasive if the dolls and trucks would have been the same color." Since plenty of people still think it's important to paint a baby girl's room pink and a boy's room blue, I agree that color differences may have biased the results. I also agree with Munger that "it's intriguing to learn that at an average age of 6 months, girls already appear to be more interested in dolls and less interested in trucks than boys are" — although given that both genders looked at the doll more, the difference seems pretty small.

However, I'd also like to point out that the doll/truck dichotomy is sort of an artificial one. Kids are surprisingly flexible, and while it's true that some only like tutus and tiaras and others are single-minded MicroMachine addicts, most kids (and most toys) fall somewhere in between. My brother and I jointly played with the following: Legos, face paint, a Playmobil castle complete with an iron maiden, a set of cardboard bricks we used for our version of "The Cask of Amontillado," Batman and dinosaur action figures (who costarred in our short film, Mr. Freeze and the Velociraptor Rumble in Van Nuys), various wigs, and a stuffed flamingo named Rasputin. As interesting as it is to study gender differences in the way kids play, and to find the source of these differences, we should remember that lots of play — like lots of human behavior in general — is ungendered, and that boys and girls have a lot more in common than an essentialist interpretation of the doll vs. truck study might suggest.

Babies As Young As Six Months Prefer Different Toys Based On Sex [ScienceBlogs]
Even At Six Months Girls Want Dolls, Not Trucks [SciGuy]

Inspired in part by Larry Summers's comment that "issues of intrinsic aptitude" were behind the gender gap in math performance, Professors Janet Hyde and Janet Mertz of the University of Wisconsin-Madison decided to review the available evidence and see if boys consistently outperformed girls at the highest levels. Summers's claim — and one accepted by many others — was that while girls might perform as well as boys on average, boys had a greater variability of mathematical aptitude and thus might always dominate in the upper echelons of mathematics. No woman, some note, has ever won the Fields Medal, math's most prestigious honor. But Hyde and Mertz found that the gap between boys and girls at the top levels of achievement did not persist throughout the world, and was smaller in countries with greater gender equality.

In Iceland, Thailand, and the UK, 15-year-old girls outnumbered boys at the top levels of math achievement. In most countries studied, girls' math skills were just as variable as boys', and in the Netherlands they were actually more variable. In general, countries where girls matched or outperformed boys were also countries with high gender equality — like Denmark, Iceland, in the UK. All of these are in the top twelve — the US is 31, right before Kazakhstan. This suggests that culture, not biology, is holding girls back in countries where boys still outperform them.

Hyde and Mertz found that the gender gap in math doesn't even hold across all ethnic groups in the US. For Asian-Americans, more girls than boys scored in the top 1% in one battery of tests. Essentially, Summers's claim of greater variability seemed only to apply to white American kids. Mertz says, "U.S. culture instills in students the belief that math talent is innate; if one is not naturally good at math, there is little one can do to become good at it. In some other countries, people more highly value mathematics and view math performance as being largely related to effort."

It's no surprise that in a country where math skill is assumed to be innate, and where prominent people tell girls they have less innate skill, that girls might not always measure up to boys. We know that negative stereotypes can affect performance, but even in the face of people like Summers, girls in the US are catching up to boys. Girls now take high school calculus at the same rate as boys, and 30% of math doctorates go to women now, as opposed to 5% in the 1950s. American girls may have a ways to go before they reach total equality, but it's going to take more than Larry Summers to keep them down.

Girls Worse At Math? No Way, New Analysis Shows [Reuters]
Culture, Not Biology, Underpins Math Gender Gap [EurekAlert]
Girls Get Math: It's Culture That's Skewed [LiveScience]
Gender Gap In Maths Driven By Social Factors, Not Biological Differences [ScienceBlogs]
Gender Stereotypes Can Affect Men's And Women's Test Performance in Math, Study Shows [NYU]
The Global Gender Gap Report 2007 [World Economic Forum]

Martha Irvine of the Associated Press explores the sociological impact that the princess push has had on young women over the past few years, finding that several psychologists (and parents) worry that the current state of princess overload is leading girls to embrace gender stereotypes and have unrealistic expectations about their lives, with parents actually buying into the princess hype and placing their daughters on a "princess pedestal." "It just encourages parents who put their kids on a pedestal - and who encourage their kids a lot and rarely criticize," says San Diego State Associate Psychology Professor Jean Twenge, "You could label that kind of parenting 'princess parenting."

But are princess toys (and books, and films, and clothing) really to blame for the entitlement these children are feeling? Or is it a lack of intervention from parents who don't know when to draw the line and separate playing princess from actually being a princess? Chris Gale, a father, says he and his wife have tried to balance his daughter's desire for princess toys by adding princess elements to real life situations in order to get their daughter more interested in nature: "We've taken advantage of this by saying that mundane locations like a tower at the end of a hike is a princess castle," Gale says, "Invoking Ariel has actually gotten her to try and enjoy eating octopus at a local restaurant."

Much like the debates over whether Barbie contributes to body image issues or whether videogames incite violence in children, the trick here seems to be a sense of reality infused into make-believe time, and a need for moderation and the encouragement of other hobbies and interests to off-set the mythology and often overwhelming marketing barrage that comes along with the Disney Princess lifestyle. Girls may want to climb on to that "princess pedestal," but it's up to their parents to be there to gently knock them off.

Princess Pedestal: How Many Girls Are On One? [AP]

At first glance, we thought, oh, this is another Breast cancer Awareness pinkening, albeit a weird one. Or, you know, maybe some reference to the third Sunday in Lent, or French academic medicine! But, no, doesn't look like it. AV Club does a swell job skewering the absurdity, offensiveness and general reek of desperation of this ludicrous marketing gambit, and we can do no better. But in our minds, this raises a few important questions:

1. How many boys are playing with Ouija boards? Maybe some eccentric neo-goth with an affected Alastair Crowley fixation, but isn't it primarily a slumber-party thing at this point? I'd guess that this is already a pretty lady-friendly product.

2. What the hell kind of guiding spirit is this aberration going to attract? Glinda the Good Witch? Jayne Mansfield? Roxy Carmichael? (Okay, that would actually be incredible.) Way to take all the creepiness and mystery and point out of it, Parker Bros.! Even Edgar Cayce wouldn't think this dud was capable of conjuring the devil!

3. Does this herald a new movement of Barbie-Spiritualism? Watch this space for rose-tinted ectoplasm and bubble-print, heart-dotted, automatic-writing kits!

Girls Like To Look At Pink While Contacting The Dead [AV Club]
The pink oujia board [The F Word]

Isis was angry to read the following:

As female students increasingly dominate in science competitions across the country, educators are facing a conundrum that requires more social analysis than hard science: Boys are not just getting beaten by girls — they're not even showing up..."We're beginning to have concerns," said Reni Barlow, executive director of Youth Science Canada, a national organization that oversees the national and regional science fairs in its mandate to foster Canada's future generation of scientists. Educators are searching for new tools to lure more boys back into the fold. In Quebec, where girls made up 68 per cent of students at this year's provincial science fair, regional organizers recently created a program focused on technology and robotics — deliberately promoting fields where boys have traditionally shown the most interest. Youth Science Canada recently launched a mentorship program that it hopes will inspire more boys to continue in the footsteps of Canada's top male researchers.

Responds Isis,

The same is true for many women in science and academia. White male members of these spheres may think they've plugged the holes, but they lack the reference to appreciate cultural differences that put pressure on women to leave professional careers. I'll never forget being 20 years old and in college, going home to meet the parents of a boy I was dating. After dinner, the boy's father leaned over, pinched my hip, and told his son, "¡Qué bueno, hijo! Ella tiene cintura perfecta para estar embarazada."...I am so pleased that young girls are becoming better represented in science and I certainly hate to think that young boys are not pursuing science. However, to conflate this with the success of women in science is short-sighted and fails to appreciate the complexity of the factors that keep women from transitioning from trainee to career scientist.

She does a superb job of outlining the obvious responses to this line of reasoning, and as a working scientist and a teacher, she's in a good position to do so. And as a commenter points out, these very encouraging statistics about girls in science don't take the longer view, with its social and societal pressures into account: a girl who loves science may well not make it her field of study or her eventual career.

And at the end of the day, isn't this really two issues? As Isis points out, it's very possible to be thrilled by such gains for women and still be distressed to see boys losing interest in science, or any other field of study. To 'blame' boys' disinterest on girls' success does a disservice to both. Why must this become a source of resentment and defensiveness, perceived as success at the expense of others - isn't it this attitude as much as anything causing the polarity? Sure, we may not live in a vacuum, a utopia of equality, but it's a privilege of childhood that for a few years, kids can believe they do. Writes one commenter on the ScienceBlog post, "Those mean old girls are outcompeting the poor widdle boys in science fair. EMERGENCY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" And yeah, that's probably how most of us feel, this level of hyperbole at what should be celebrated and cheered in a world where men have the upper hand. But these kids are also individuals, and whatever the larger social truths of their advantages and privilege, their losing interest in science is an emergency. But in the acrimonious world of "boys versus girls" it seems like sometimes "kids" gets lost, and that's a shame. 68% smart women at a science fair, the fact that the three top winners at this year's Intel Science Competition are girls, is wonderful, a triumph for women, but also for scientists and smart people - an example, ideally, to all kids rather than a source of divisiveness to adults.
There Are Too Many Girls in Science! Let the Boys Back In! [ScienceBlog]

At the science fair, girls dominate the class [Globe and Mail]
Three Young Women Win Top Honors at World's Largest Pre-College Science Competition [DDJ]

Recently we linked to a CNN article in which a mom discussed her preference for a boy over a girl baby. Now Tori Spelling is admitting to the same feelings, prior to giving birth to daughter Stella, now a year old. The product of a famously contentious relationship with her own mom, Candi, Spelling apparently worried about replicating the dynamic. "How was I going to handle a girl?" She asks in Cookie.

Of course, now that the daughters exist, both moms have come around, presumably appreciating the differences - and, more to the point, appreciating them as individuals rather than simply defined by their sex. But soon enough, apparently, that sort of journey won't be necessary. Says Babble,

Now, according to a Swedish medical ruling, if a mother or couple discover the gender of their baby and decide "that's what we were hoping for" they can get an abortion on that basis

It seems sad to think that people like Wilson or Spelling who take advantage of this won't get the chance to challenge their assumptions and maybe have something unexpected and wonderful happen - and what's with no one wanting girls? (Selective pregnancy for boys is, after all, chillingly familiar.) Then too, this seems like a very slippery slope: what of those who want to isolate the "gay" gene to guarantee heterosexual offspring?

On the other hand, perhaps any parent who is that single-mindedly eager for a son or daughter might let the disappointment (?) color a child's life, and if that's the only way they feel capable of parenting well, then...But: there's so much chance in having a child at all that the sex is surely almost the least of it! Having children seems to be largely about giving yourself over to a loss of control: to love, to fear, to the unexpected. Control is futile - isn't that the tragedy and the beauty of giving birth to another human being? - and any parent is going to learn that soon enough. Sex would seem like a good place to start.

Don't like Your Baby's Gender? Sweden Rules 'Gender-Based' Abortion Legal [Babble]
Tori Spelling Was Worried About Raising a Girl [Cookie]
Earlier: This Mom: Brave Enough To Admit She Wanted A Boy, Not A Girl