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Title details for The Curse of the Good Girl by Rachel Simmons - Available

The Curse of the Good Girl

Raising Authentic Girls with Courage and Confidence

by Rachel Simmons
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Bestselling author of Odd Girl Out, Rachel Simmons exposes the myth of the Good Girl, freeing girls from its impossible standards and encouraging them to embrace their real selves
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.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    August 25, 2009

  • Formats

    • Kindle Book

    • OverDrive Read

      • ISBN: 9781101133538

    • EPUB ebook

      • ISBN: 9781101133538
      • File size: 778 KB

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Publisher's Weekly

      May 18, 2009
      In this volume for parents of middle-school daughters, the author of Odd Girl Out
      observes that girls today still pressure themselves to conform to the old, narrow paradigm of a nice, people-pleasing, rule-following, even-tempered, socially acceptable good girl, shunning the image of a rebellious, proud, socially outré, in-charge, outspoken bad girl. To dispel the curse of the good girl, and despite using those familiar, easily misconstrued labels as a touchstone, Girls Leadership Institute founder Simmons offers instructive tales out of school and workshops, revealing that flawed communication rituals and fear of confrontation contribute equally to a girl’s belief that it is more important to be liked than to be an individual. In order to become a successful, well-adjusted “real girl,” she needs to know how to say no to peers, ask for what she needs and express what she thinks. In the second half of this book, parents will find concrete strategies and tools—confidence-building exercises that emphasize emotional intelligence, self-evaluations, q&a’s, scripts and lots of first-person stories—to help guide a girl’s growth into a young woman who can respect and listen to her inner voice, say what she feels and thinks, embrace her limits and present an authentic self to the world.

    • Library Journal

      August 25, 2009
      Simmons, the best-selling author of the acclaimed Odd Girl Out, offers another spot-on cultural critique, this time arguing that girls are developing external resumes but not conflict-resolution skills. As a result, they are ill-prepared in their personal relationships and for the workforce. Techniques such as crying and saying "sorry" to restore the status quo terminate meaningful conversation and become a substitute for honest conversation. "Good girls" grow into women who stagnate in middle management, doing the work of others to "be nice" or going the extra mile, but missing out on the out of office networking, where much professional advancement occurs. Buy in quantity; another huge contribution by Simmons.-Julianne J. Smith, Ypsilanti Dist. Lib., MI

      Copyright 2009 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Formats

  • Kindle Book
  • OverDrive Read
  • EPUB ebook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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