Packaging Girlhood: Rescuing Our Daughters from Marketers' Schemes

The stereotype-laden message, delivered through clothes, music, books, and TV, is essentially a continuous plea for girls to put their energies into beauty products, shopping, fashion, and boys. This constant marketing, cheapening of relationships, absence of good women role models, and stereotyping and sexualization of girls is something that parents need to first understand before they can take action. Lamb and Brown teach parents how to understand these influences, give them guidance on how to talk to their daughters about these negative images, and provide the tools to help girls make positive choices about the way they are in the world. In the tradition of books like Reviving Ophelia, Odd Girl Out, Queen Bees and Wannabees that examine the world of girls, this book promises to not only spark debate but help parents to help their daughters.

Brown, Lyn Mikel

Lamb, Sharon

Health, Fitness & Dieting

St.Martin's Press

Player. Jock. Slacker. Competitor. Superhero. Goofball. Boys are besieged by images in the media that encourage slacking over studying; competition over teamwork; power over empower - ment; and being cool over being yourself. From cartoons to video games, boys are bombarded with stereotypes about what it means to be a boy, including messages about violence, risktaking, and perfecting an image of just not caring. Straight from the mouths of over 600 boys surveyed from across the U.S., the authors offer parents a long, hard look at what boys are watch ing, reading, hearing, and doing. They give parents advice on how to talk with their sons about these troubling images and provide them with tools to help their sons resist these mes sages and be their unique selves.

Packaging Boyhood: Saving Our Sons from Superheroes, Slackers, and Other Media Stereotypes

Parenting & Relationships

Tappan, Mark

Parenting

On the way to womanhood, what does a girl give up? For five years, Lyn Mikel Brown and Carol Gilligan, asking this question, listened to one hundred girls who were negotiating the rough terrain of adolescence. This book invites us to listen, too, and to hear in these girls' voices what is rarely spoken, often ignored, and generally misunderstood: how the passage out of girlhood is a journey into silence, disconnection, and dissembling, a troubled crossing that our culture has plotted with dead ends and detours. 
 In the course of their research, Brown and Gilligan developed a Listener's Guide - a method of following the pathways of girls' thoughts and feelings, of distinguishing what girls are saying by the way they say it. We witness the struggle girls undergo as they enter adolescence only to find that what they feel and think and know can no longer be said directly. We see them at a cultural impasse, and listen as they make the painful, necessary adjustments, outspokenness giving way to circumspection, self-knowledge to uncertainty, authority to compliance. These changes mark the edge of adolescence as a watershed in women's psychological development, a time of wrenching disjunctions between body and psyche, voice and desire, self and relationship. Brown and Gilligan open their method to us and share their discoveries as they encourage girls at different ages to speak about themselves in conversation with women. They follow some of these girls over time, listening to changes in their distinct voices from one year to the next, addressing their successes and failures as they confront one barrier after another. 
 This groundbreaking work offers major new insights into girls' development and women's psychology. But perhaps more importantly, it provides women with the means of meeting girls at the critical crossroads of adolescence, of harkening to the voices of girlhood and sustaining their sell-affirming notes.

Meeting at the Crossroads: Women’s Psychology and Girls’ Development

Gilligan, Carol

Mental Health

Harvard University Press

On the way to womanhood, what does a girl give up? For five years, Lyn Mikel Brown and Carol Gilligan, asking this question, listened to one hundred girls who were negotiating the rough terrain of adolescence. This book invites us to listen, too, and to hear in these girls' voices what is rarely spoken, often ignored, and generally misunderstood: how the passage out of girlhood is a journey into silence, disconnection, and dissembling, a troubled crossing that our culture has plotted with dead ends and detours. In the course of their research, Brown and Gilligan developed a Listener's Guide - a method of following the pathways of girls' thoughts and feelings, of distinguishing what girls are saying by the way they say it. We witness the struggle girls undergo as they enter adolescence only to find that what they feel and think and know can no longer be said directly. We see them at a cultural impasse, and listen as they make the painful, necessary adjustments, outspokenness giving way to circumspection, self-knowledge to uncertainty, authority to compliance. These changes mark the edge of adolescence as a watershed in women's psychological development, a time of wrenching disjunctions between body and psyche, voice and desire, self and relationship. Brown and Gilligan open their method to us and share their discoveries as they encourage girls at different ages to speak about themselves in conversation with women. They follow some of these girls over time, listening to changes in their distinct voices from one year to the next, addressing their successes and failures as they confront one barrier after another. This groundbreaking work offers major new insights into girls' development and women's psychology. But perhaps more importantly, it provides women with the means of meeting girls at the critical crossroads of adolescence, of harkening to the voices of girlhood and sustaining their sell-affirming notes.

Psychology & Counseling

Two fourteen-year-old girls, fed up with the "Hooters" shirts worn by their male classmates, design their own rooster logo: "Cocks: Nothing to crow about." Seventeen-year-old April Schuldt, unmarried, pregnant, and cheated out of her election as homecoming queen by squeamish school administrators, disrupts a pep rally with a protest that engages the whole school.
Where are spirited girls like these in the popular accounts of teenage girlhood, that supposed wasteland of depression, low self-esteem, and passive victimhood? This book, filled with the voices of teenage girls, corrects the misperceptions that have crept into our picture of female adolescence. Based on the author's yearlong conversation with white junior-high and middle-school girls--from the working poor and the middle class--Raising Their Voices allows us to hear how girls adopt some expectations about gender but strenuously resist others, how they use traditionally feminine means to maintain their independence, and how they recognize and resist pressures to ignore their own needs and wishes.
With a psychologist's sensitivity and an anthropologist's attention to cultural variations, Lyn Brown makes provocative observations about individual differences in the girls' experiences and attitudes, and shows how their voices are shaped and constrained by class--with working-class girls more willing to be openly angry than their middle-class peers, and yet more likely to denigrate themselves and attribute their failures to personal weakness.
A compelling and timely corrective to conventional wisdom, this book attunes our hearing to the true voices of teenage girls: determined, confused, amusing, touching, feisty, and clear.

Raising Their Voices: The Politics of Girls' Anger

Teen & Young Adult

Two fourteen-year-old girls, fed up with the "Hooters" shirts worn by their male classmates, design their own rooster logo: "Cocks: Nothing to crow about." Seventeen-year-old April Schuldt, unmarried, pregnant, and cheated out of her election as homecoming queen by squeamish school administrators, disrupts a pep rally with a protest that engages the whole school. 
 Where are spirited girls like these in the popular accounts of teenage girlhood, that supposed wasteland of depression, low self-esteem, and passive victimhood? This book, filled with the voices of teenage girls, corrects the misperceptions that have crept into our picture of female adolescence. Based on the author's yearlong conversation with white junior-high and middle-school girls--from the working poor and the middle class--Raising Their Voices allows us to hear how girls adopt some expectations about gender but strenuously resist others, how they use traditionally feminine means to maintain their independence, and how they recognize and resist pressures to ignore their own needs and wishes. 
 With a psychologist's sensitivity and an anthropologist's attention to cultural variations, Lyn Brown makes provocative observations about individual differences in the girls' experiences and attitudes, and shows how their voices are shaped and constrained by class--with working-class girls more willing to be openly angry than their middle-class peers, and yet more likely to denigrate themselves and attribute their failures to personal weakness. 
 A compelling and timely corrective to conventional wisdom, this book attunes our hearing to the true voices of teenage girls: determined, confused, amusing, touching, feisty, and clear.

"Should sound a national alert to society that even our most privileged girls still pursue normal femininity at great risk to personal and civic health."THE BOSTON SUNDAY GLOBELyn Mike Brown and Carol Gilligan ask "What, on the way to womanhood, does a girl give up?" One hundred girls gave voice to what is rarely spoken and often ignored: that the passage out of girlhood is a journey into silence and disconnection, a troubled crossing when a girl loses a firm sense of self and becomes tentative and unsure. These changes mark the endge of adolescence as a watershed in women's psychological development and the stories the girls tell are by turns heartrending and courageous. Listening to these girls provides us with the means of reaching out to them at this critical time, and of better understanding what we as women and men may have left behind at our own crossroads.A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR

Meeting at the Crossroads: Women's Psychology and Girls' Development

Diane Pub Co.

A playbook for working with and training girls to be activists of their own social movements Drawing from a diverse collection of interviews with women and girl activists, Powered by Girl is both a journalistic exploration of how girls have embraced activism and a guide for adults who want to support their organizing. Here we learn about the intergenerational support behind thirteen-year-old Julia Bluhm when she got Seventeen to go Photoshop free; nineteen-year-old Celeste Montaño, who pressed Google to diversify their Doodles; and sixteen-year-old Yas Necati, who campaigns for better sex education. And we learn what experienced adult activists say about how to scaffold girls’ social-change work. Brown argues that adults shouldn’t encourage girls to “lean in.” Rather, girls should be supported in creating their own movements—disrupting the narrative, developing their own ideas—on their own terms.

Powered by Girl: A Field Guide for Supporting Youth Activists

Business & Money

Job Hunting & Careers

Beacon Press

For some time, reality TV, talk shows, soap-operas, and sitcoms have turned their spotlights on women and girls who thrive on competition and nastiness. Few fairytales lack the evil stepmother, wicked witch, or jealous sister. Even cartoons feature mean and sassy girls who only become sweet and innocent when adults appear. And recently, popular books and magazines have turned their gaze away from ways of positively influencing girls' independence and self-esteem and towards the topic of girls' meanness to other girls. What does this say about the way our culture views girlhood? How much do these portrayals affect the way girls view themselves?
In Girlfighting, psychologist and educator Lyn Mikel Brown scrutinizes the way our culture nurtures and reinforces this sort of meanness in girls. She argues that the old adage “girls will be girls”—gossipy, competitive, cliquish, backstabbing— and the idea that fighting is part of a developmental stage or a rite-of-passage, are not acceptable explanations. Instead, she asserts, girls are discouraged from expressing strong feelings and are pressured to fulfill unrealistic expectations, to be popular, and struggle to find their way in a society that still reinforces gender stereotypes and places greater value on boys. Under such pressure, in their frustration and anger, girls (often unconsciously) find it less risky to take out their fears and anxieties on other girls instead of challenging the ways boys treat them, the way the media represents them, or the way the culture at large supports sexist practices. Girlfighting traces the changes in girls' thoughts, actions and feelings from childhood into young adulthood, providing the developmental understanding and theoretical explanation often lacking in other conversations. Through interviews with over 400 girls of diverse racial, economic, and geographic backgrounds, Brown chronicles the labyrinthine journey girls take from direct and outspoken children who like and trust other girls, to distrusting and competitive young women. She argues that this familiar pathway can and should be interrupted and provides ways to move beyond girlfighting to build girl allies and to support coalitions among girls.
By allowing the voices of girls to be heard, Brown demonstrates the complex and often contradictory realities girls face, helping us to better understand and critique the socializing forces in their lives and challenging us to rethink the messages we send them.

Girlfighting: Betrayal and Rejection among Girls

NYU Press

For some time, reality TV, talk shows, soap-operas, and sitcoms have turned their spotlights on women and girls who thrive on competition and nastiness. Few fairytales lack the evil stepmother, wicked witch, or jealous sister. Even cartoons feature mean and sassy girls who only become sweet and innocent when adults appear. And recently, popular books and magazines have turned their gaze away from ways of positively influencing girls' independence and self-esteem and towards the topic of girls' meanness to other girls. What does this say about the way our culture views girlhood? How much do these portrayals affect the way girls view themselves? In Girlfighting, psychologist and educator Lyn Mikel Brown scrutinizes the way our culture nurtures and reinforces this sort of meanness in girls. She argues that the old adage “girls will be girls”—gossipy, competitive, cliquish, backstabbing— and the idea that fighting is part of a developmental stage or a rite-of-passage, are not acceptable explanations. Instead, she asserts, girls are discouraged from expressing strong feelings and are pressured to fulfill unrealistic expectations, to be popular, and struggle to find their way in a society that still reinforces gender stereotypes and places greater value on boys. Under such pressure, in their frustration and anger, girls (often unconsciously) find it less risky to take out their fears and anxieties on other girls instead of challenging the ways boys treat them, the way the media represents them, or the way the culture at large supports sexist practices. Girlfighting traces the changes in girls' thoughts, actions and feelings from childhood into young adulthood, providing the developmental understanding and theoretical explanation often lacking in other conversations. Through interviews with over 400 girls of diverse racial, economic, and geographic backgrounds, Brown chronicles the labyrinthine journey girls take from direct and outspoken children who like and trust other girls, to distrusting and competitive young women. She argues that this familiar pathway can and should be interrupted and provides ways to move beyond girlfighting to build girl allies and to support coalitions among girls. By allowing the voices of girls to be heard, Brown demonstrates the complex and often contradictory realities girls face, helping us to better understand and critique the socializing forces in their lives and challenging us to rethink the messages we send them.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Brown, Lyn Mikel. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Brown, Lyn Mikel

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Brown, Lyn Mikel. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Packaging Girlhood: Rescuing Our Daughters from Marketers' Schemes

Packaging Boyhood: Saving Our Sons from Superheroes, Slackers, and Other Media Stereotypes

Meeting at the Crossroads: Women’s Psychology and Girls’ Development

Meeting at the Crossroads: Women’s Psychology and Girls’ Development

Raising Their Voices: The Politics of Girls' Anger

Raising Their Voices: The Politics of Girls' Anger

Meeting at the Crossroads: Women's Psychology and Girls' Development

Powered by Girl: A Field Guide for Supporting Youth Activists

Girlfighting: Betrayal and Rejection among Girls

Girlfighting: Betrayal and Rejection among Girls