Queen Bees and Wannabes: Helping Your Daughter Survive Cliques, Gossip, Boyfriends, and Other...

Queen Bees and Wannabes: Helping Your Daughter Survive Cliques, Gossip, Boyfriends, and Other Realities of ... | Rosalind Wiseman | Accurate Description of Teenage Life

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Queen Bees and Wan...

	Queen Bees and Wannabes: Helping Your Daughter Survive Cliques, Gossip, Boyfriends, and Other Realities of ... Rosalind Wiseman Three Rivers Press, 2002 - 352 pages average customer review:based on 96 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Well-researched and informative

I bought this book because I am interested in teenage girl society. I was expecting another book like REVIVING OPHELIA, where I thought the author based way too much of her theories on anecdotal evidence, and was very surprised and impressed by what I got instead.

Wiseman deconstructs teen girl society--"Girl World"--in comprehensive and realistic, down-to-earth fashion, exploring the ways in which media, peer pressure, and parental messages interact, enforce, and reinforce each other. She delves into the very culturally sensitive topics of race and sexual orientation. She makes no bones about stating that much of what parents and society attempt to teach girls about the pressures of drugs, sex, and alcohol that they face is really intended to make parents feel better about themselves and not about giving their children the tools they need to make wise and informed choices about how best to protect themselves and set boundaries that are true to what they want as individuals, rather than going along with the group. She also provides a list of references several pages long for further reading.

She also doesn't just look at girls. She examines cultural pressures on boys too, and the ways in which boys are also forced to conform to cultural stereotypes (in fact, these were some of the chapters of the book that I found most interesting), and deals with the ways in which "Girl World" and "Boy World" fit together in the cauldron of modern culture.

Wiseman's straight-ahead approach to issues is refreshing and honest; she is realistic about the limits of parental authority, and points out that overprotecting your daughter will work right up until the point where she is eighteen years old, and tossed out into society to deal with these issues now on her own. The only thing I wish she'd done differently is spend a little more time talking to and dealing with girls who don't belong to cliques, through a combination of outcastness and choice--she was very upfront about pointing out that not belonging to cliques, while it can be very painful at the time, can enable a girl to come through adolescence with a greater sense of self-worth than girls who feel they have to suck up to the Queen Bees. Overall, however, I was quite impressed and feel that this is a very good look at teenage girl society.

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Accurate Description of Teenage Life

I am a 15 year old girl and I think that this book is very accurate. I was interested to read that the author finds that the reactions of girls to her presence to be identical without exception. I think that clearly, to develop statements such as this, the author must be passionately motivated to making a positive difference in the lives of young women today. This book is the result of her investments in this goal, and it is obvious in reading the book that her dedication has produced some tremendous results. She makes quotes and stories from real-life girls available in her book. As a result she has developed a book, which contains extensive amounts of knowledge "forbidden" to parents. As a teenager, I must admit that I really am shocked by the conclusions that the author is able to draw about girls. She has gained an insight into girls' lives far beyond what I imagined adults were actually aware of. Though you should know that, as a parent, your daughter's dealings with cliques may not be as extreme as all of the worst-case scenarios in this book. However, this is a great book for the purposes of connecting with your daugther's stressful life, and I plan on asking my mother to read it as well.

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from a high school student's point of view

I am a high school student. I decided to borrow this book from a friend after watching Mean Girls because this is the book the movie is based on. I thought it was mostly accurate except for the stuff about popular girls. I thought that some parts of the book were confusing and hard to follow. But I wish my mom would read this because it would help her understand my life more. I figured I would just comment on this to help moms who are seeking to understand their daughter's lives and who are considering purchasing this.

reviews: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, page 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19

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