A book recommended by Trish Ryan as one of the inspirations for her 2008 memoir, He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not (Trish’s new memoir comes out this June), Schoolgirls, written in 1994, a decade before the “Mean Girls” movie, and light years before anyone else was really writing about this topic, touches on the subject of teenage girls, self-esteem, and the confidence gap.
A compelling read. I couldn’t put it down. Written in story form, it tells the story of countless schoolgirls who struggle with self-image, bad beliefs, rejection, loss, and nowhere to vent those feelings. I was particularly interested to realize that even though I spent a lot of my young adult years learning to submit, that was not actually an event peculiar to our Protestant fundamentalist cult: young women everywhere, whether in public or private school, are often relegated to secondary importance. We’ve had a lot of years of “second sex” status and everywhere I look, I see women willing to subvert their own lives just to be with a boy or to be married or to get a paycheck. I think we can do better.
But I don’t have the answers. I don’t know what should be done. I just want to read widely to learn. And that’s what this book was for. I learned some things. I recommend it to parents of both boys and girls or any other adult who also wants to learn.
Grade: A (very well-written and insightful)
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