Rosalind Wiseman is an internationally recognized author and educator on children, teens, parenting, education and social justice. Her work aims to help parents, educators and young people successfully navigate the social challenges of young adulthood.
Rosalind Wiseman
creating cultures of dignity
Win a Copy of “The Curse of the Good Girl” by Rachel Simmons!
Just in time for back-to-school, bestselling author and rosalindwiseman.com blogger Rachel Simmons’ latest book, The Curse of the Good Girl, is hitting stores on August 25!
About the Book
In The Curse of the Good Girl, bestselling author Rachel Simmons argues that in lionizing the Good Girl we are teaching girls to embrace a version of selfhood that sharply curtails their power and potential. Unerringly nice, polite, modest, and selfless, the Good Girl is a paradigm so narrowly defined that it’s unachievable. When girls inevitably fail to live up—experiencing conflicts with peers, making mistakes in the classroom or on the playing field—they are paralyzed by self-criticism, stunting the growth of vital skills and habits. Simmons traces the poisonous impact of Good Girl pressure on development and provides a strategy to reverse the tide. At once expository and prescriptive, The Curse of the Good Girl is a call to arms from a new front in female empowerment.
Looking to the stories shared by the women and girls who attend her workshops, Simmons shows that Good Girl pressure from parents, teachers, coaches, media, and peers erects a psychological glass ceiling that begins to enforce its confines in girlhood and extends across the female lifespan. The curse of the Good Girl erodes girls’ ability to know, express, and manage a complete range of feelings. It expects girls to be selfless, limiting the expression of their needs. It requires modesty, depriving the permission to articulate their strengths and goals. It diminishes assertive body language, quieting voices and weakening handshakes. It touches all areas of girls’ lives and follows many into adulthood, limiting their personal and professional potential.
Since the popularization of the Ophelia phenomenon, we have lamented the loss of self-esteem in adolescent girls, recognizing that while the doors of opportunity are open to twenty-first-century American girls, many lack the confidence to walk through them. In The Curse of the Good Girl, Simmons provides a catalog of tangible lessons in bolstering the self and silencing the curse of the Good Girl. At the core of Simmons’s radical argument is her belief that the most critical freedom we can win for our daughters is the liberty not only to listen to their inner voice but also to act on it.
Win a Free Copy Before It Hits Stores!
We’re giving away 5 copies of The Curse of the Good Girl to rosalindwiseman.com readers! How do you enter?
1. Reply to this post before Friday, August 21 at 5:00pm Eastern Time, and in the body of your reply, tell us about a time when you were a teenager that you wish you had stood up for yourself but didn’t. Then tell us how you’d handle it differently if you could do it over.
2. Make sure to include your full name and correct email address so that we can contact you if you win. (Your email address will not be published.)
3. We’ll choose the 5 best responses to win a copy of The Curse of the Good Girl.
Good Luck!
Click here to read Rachel Simmons’ blog.
Click here to visit Rachel Simmons’ website.
Click here to learn more about Odd Girl Out.
Click here to learn more about Odd Girl Speaks Out.
11 Responses to “Win a Copy of “The Curse of the Good Girl” by Rachel Simmons!”
Leave a Reply
August 19th, 2009 at 5:45 am
Cyndi, I agree–I have a lot more stories about adults.
But the one I can think of from middle school is that in the 8th grade my best friend was a guy named Chris. We hung out all year and it was completely platonic. He was like my brother. We talked on the phone a lot and our parents were cool with the fact that we hung out alot alone–it just wasn’t weird.
Then Chris started dating a girl in our grade, Kelly, that I didn’t know very well but had helped him think of ways to get up the courage to talk to her and stuff so I was not threatened at all. But I don’t think it was the same for her because after they started dating he was completely different. At first he just didn’t return phone calls but then he stopped having lunch with me and finally one day when I called to him in the crowded hallway when he was ahead of me (like I’d always done) he turned around and screamed “What the hell is your problem, are you like obsessed with me or something?” I froze and I think everyone was looking at me. And up ahead I could see Kelly standing by her locker with some friends and they were laughing hysterically. I ran to the bathroom and pretty much stayed there the rest of the day crying.
I completely ignored him after that…obviously. But I wish that I had tried to talk to him alone at some point and figure out what was going on rather than ignore it. And I wish I had tried to tell Kelly there was nothing to worry about. A year or so later after they’d broken up he was sort of sheepishly trying to be friends but by then I had a boyfriend and got more pleasure out of ignoring him than I did being friends. Very sad.