Recently in Adolescence Category

Rachel Simmons is a writer and a teacher who has penned two New York Times bestsellers. Not too shabby.

In 2002, Simmons' wrote Odd Girl Out: The Hidden Culture of Aggression in Girls, which shed light on the "mean girls" phenomenon and examined for the first time the cliques and codes of teen girl culture in an academic but accessible way. Like Odd Girl Out, Simmons' second book The Curse of the Good Girl, is based on hundreds of hours spent interviewing and teaching young girls, which Simmons does all over the world. At her summer camp the Girls Leadership Institute, during the months she spends every year teaching at a girls school in South Africa, Simmons gets a rare, honest look inside the torturously complex inner workings of Girl World. The Curse of the Good Girl was written for the parents of young girls, so that their daughters can not only survive Girl World, but emerge as authentic and self-aware young women.

Simmons lives in Brooklyn and, during the course of our phone interview, managed to parallel-park her car according to that borough's complex alternate-side parking rules, while also answering questions about the many challenges facing the modern feminist movement. Again, not too shabby. As you'll see from her interview, Simmons is a very impressive lady.

And now, without further ado, the Feministing Five, with Rachel Simmons.

I had to post a link to the new movie, Precious:

I am halfway through Push, the book by Sapphire that the movie is based on. It is not often that so many issues women face are embodied in one character. From racism, sizism, sexual violence, domestic violence, welfare issues, colorism, ablism, and many, many more -- this is the ultimate feminist primer! I am not quite sure what to make of how Precious' mother's character, played by Mo'Nique, is being framed as the "monstrous matriarch." On one hand, giving her villainous character, it seems fitting. On the other hand, what does it mean that the black single mom has once again gotten this branding? This is especially interesting considering the villainous male characters in the story that seem conspicuously absent from this trailer.

On another note, I posted earlier this week about Tyler Perry. He is serving as an executive producer of this film, alongside Oprah. Again, I think we can log some progress points for Perry on this one. It will be important to see what, if any, the trade offs will be.

But, after all, I'm just a cautious optimist. Preliminary thoughts?

Thirteen-year-old Savana Redding of Safford, Arizona, was strip searched by middle school administrators, on a tip from another student who claimed she had contraband Advil hidden in her bra. Her lawyer argued to the Supreme Court this week that school officials violated the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits unreasonable searches. School officials didn't bother to search her desk or locker, or even question additional students before they made her strip down to her skivvies.

Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer revealed himself to be less than equipped to hear the case. From Dahlia Lithwick's great Slate piece on the topic:

"In my experience when I was 8 or 10 or 12 years old, you know, we did take our clothes off once a day, we changed for gym, OK? And in my experience, too, people did sometimes stick things in my underwear." Click Here!

Shocked silence, followed by explosive laughter. In fact, I have never seen Justice Clarence Thomas laugh harder. Breyer tries to recover: "Or not my underwear. Whatever. Whatever. I was the one who did it? I don't know. I mean, I don't think it's beyond human experience."

Wow, so your history of bullying now constitutes legal or moral precedent? I'm sorry, did I miss a shift in our legal justice system by which judge's adolescent hijinks were sound juris prudence? It gets even more bizarre...

By now, even Justice David Souter has ditched Wolf, musing that if he were the principal in a school, he "would rather have the kid embarrassed by a strip search ... than have some other kids dead because the stuff is distributed at lunchtime and things go awry."

Dead? By a couple of Advil?

The combination of disregard for young women's bodily integrity with total hyperbole about the potential effects of a couple of Ibuprofen is infuriating. Students deserve the same rights as their oh-so-adult counterparts, regardless of and, hell, especially because they are subjected to the horrors of the adolescent locker room.

Thanks to Annasara for the heads up.

This is the second incident this month of a young man of color that killed himself because of anti-gay bullying. The first was an 11-year-old Massachusetts boy, Carl Joseph Walker-Hoover. The second is eleven year old Jaheem Herrera hung himself last week and speculation suggests it was due to homophobic bullying.

Jaheem was bullied relentlessly, his family said. Keene said the family knew the boy was a target, but until his death they didn't understand the scope.

"We'd ask him, 'Jaheem, what's wrong with you?'" Keene recalled. "He'd never tell us."

He didn't want his sister to tell, either. She witnessed much of the bullying, and many times rose to her brother's defense, Keene said.

"They called him gay and a snitch," his stepfather said. "All the time they'd call him this."

In an interview with WSB-TV, Bermudez also said her son was being bullied at school. She said she had complained to the school.

She said she asked him about the bullying Thursday when he came home from school and he denied it. She sent him to his room to calm down. It was the last time she would see him alive.

At what point do we start paying attention to kids that are being called "gay" as an epithet? It is never OK and no matter how much it is happening, it seems that our cultural fixation with masculinity and homophobia subsides. My heart goes out to his family, this is truly devastating.

Also check out GLSEN's 4-steps you can take to stop anti-LGBT bullying in your school.

(h/t BiancaLaureana via Twitter.)

I just wanted to pass this along...

Each girl has her own inner beauty: the beauty of action, caring, activism. Tell us about the inner beauty of your daughter, granddaughter, niece, neighbor or student and help us to inspire girls everywhere with their own unique inner beauty.

Every year, New Moon Girls magazine features 25 girls ages 8-12 who are beautiful inside. Our Girls Editorial Board selects 25 girls (from those who are nominated) who represent many different aspects of inner beauty. Those girls are featured in our May/June issue. And all the other girls who are nominated receive special recognition and are also honored at NewMoonGirls.com

Anyone can nominate a girl - her family, someone in the community, another girl. And girls can also nominate themselves!

I encourage you to nominate one or more girls by clicking here to download the short form. Then just complete the nomination form and and email it as an attached file to submissions@newmoongirlmedia.com. The deadline is midnight Central Standard Time on Monday, January 19, so act today!

Too often, girls aren't given props for their inner beauty, so please nominate someone you know (or yourself!) today.

The New York Times has an interesting story today about new studies that allegedly confirm that teen girls co-ruminate (i.e. talk a topic into the ground) to the extent that it contributes to anxiety and depression. By going over and over and over an event or feeling, they keep themselves locked in a negative thinking pattern.

Mmm....brought me back to the old junior high days of a cruel little slumber party tradition in Colorado Springs, Colorado called "truth talk." You don't want to know...

Your thoughts? Do adolescent girls make themselves sick with over-analysis or are they just communicating and processing--something that adolescent boys could benefit from doing a bit more of?