Packaging Girlhood: Rescuing Our Daughters from Marketers' Schemes - Paperback

by Sharon Lamb (Author), Lyn Mikel Brown (Author)

Winner of the Books for a Better Life Award

Every parent who cares about empowering her daughter should own a copy.
- Rachel Simmons, author of Odd Girl Out: The Hidden Culture of Aggression in Girls

...a must-read for parents and teachers who want to steer girls away from marketing schemes that distort female power and authority and toward true self-acceptance and authentic empowerment.
-- Polly Young Eisendrath, author of Women and Desire and The Resilient Spirit

The image of girls and girlhood that is being packaged and sold to your daughter isn't pretty in pink. It is stereotypical, demeaning, limiting, and alarming. Girls are besieged by images in the media that encourage accessorizing over academics; sex appeal over sports; fashion over friendship.
Packaging Girlhood exposes these stereotypes and gives you guidance on how to talk with your daughters about these negative images and provides you with tools and information on how to help your girls make more positive choices.

A tour de force of excellent scholarship put in a very readable context and chockfull of practical suggestions for parents for change!
-- William S. Pollack, Ph.D., author of Real Boys: Rescuing Our Sons from the Myths of Boyhood

Sharon Lamb and Lyn Mikel Brown have that rare gift of translating cutting-edge research and analysis into strategies and information that every parent (and every girl) can use in daily life.
-- Joe Kelly, president of Dads and Daughters (DADs)

With compassion, insight, and humor [Lamb and Brown] unravel and demystify the messages girls confront throughout their development, and they offer adults useful tools to help girls resist their powerful pull.
-- Lynn M. Phillips, Ph.D., Department of Communications, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

Sharon Lamb and Lyn Mikel Brown's sharp analysis and patiently pragmatic advice is just what we need to sustain our daughter's quests for healthy identities.
-Michael Kimmel, author Manhood in America, Professor, SUNY Stony Brook

Sharon Lamb, author of The Secret Lives of Girls, is professor of Psychology at Saint Michael's College in Vermont. Her research on girls' and teens' development is widely cited. Additionally, she listens to their struggles and strengths in her private practice.

Lyn Mikel Brown, professor of Education at Colby College in Maine, is the author of three books on girls' development, including Meeting at the Crossroads: Women's Psychology and Girls' Development (with Carol Gilligan). She creates programs for girls at her nonprofit Hardy Girls Healthy Women (www.hghw.org).

Front Jacket

Packaging Girlhood" is a must read for anyone who cares about the health and well-being of girls. It exposes the marketing industry's assault on pre-teens and is filled with helpful suggestions for beleaguered parents."
"-"Susan Linn, Associate Director of the Media Center at Judge Baker Children's Center and Instructor in Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School
Sexy. Diva. Boy-crazy. Shopper.
The image of girls and girlhood that is being packaged and sold to your daughter isn't pretty in pink. It is stereotypical, demeaning, limiting, and alarming. Girl Power has been co-opted by marketers of music, fashion, books, and television to mean the power to shop and attract boys. Girls are besieged by images in the media that encourage accessorizing over academics; sex appeal over sports; fashion over friendship. These stereotypes are everywhere, from Disney movies to Hip Hop lyrics, Nickelodeon cartoons to "Seventeen Magazine."
Girls are consistently portrayed as a series of stereotypes: Little girls are "perfect little angels," sometimes with a sassy twist; elementary school-aged girls are boy-crazy "tweens," ready to be sold a version of mini-teendom that eclipses the wonderful years of childhood that truly belongs to them; middle school girls are full-fledged teenagers or at least teen-age wannabes and eager to conform to that CosmoGirl lifestyle . And high school girls? They're sold an image of the sexually free model-diva-rock star that the younger girls are supposed to look up to.
"Packaging Girlhood" exposes these stereotypes and the very limited choices presented of who girls are and what they can be. Lamb and Brown give you guidance on how to talk with your daughtersabout these negative images and provide you with tools and information on how to help your girls make more positive choices about the way they are in the world.
"Parents constantly complain that they have only a small shovel to hold back the avalanche of products and messages that erode children's resilience and sap their self-esteem. Now they have this book. Sharon Lamb and Lyn Mikel Brown's sharp analysis and patiently pragmatic advice is just what we need to sustain our daughter's quests for healthy identities."
-Michael Kimmel, author "Manhood in America," Professor, SUNY Stony Brook

Back Jacket

Advance praise for "Packaging Girlhood"
"Be prepared to be shocked and saddened as you come to see the world of sex, shopping, media, body-fat, and self-esteem through the wide eyes of today's American girls. Be prepared, also, to find invaluable guidance and insight from authors Sharon Lamb and Lyn Brown who know our daughters from inside out. This is a must-read for parents and teachers who want to steer girls away from marketing schemes that distort female power and authority, and towards true self-acceptance and authentic empowerment."
-Polly Young-Eisendrath, author of "Women and Desire" and "The Resilient Spirit"
"Lyn Mikel Brown and Sharon Lamb have that rare gift of translating cutting edge research and analysis into strategies and information that every parent (and every girl) can use in daily life. In "Packaging Girlhood," they provide solid ways for families to help girls stay rooted in reality while buffeted by the powerful winds of commercialism. In the process, we parents learn more than a little about staying rooted in reality ourselves. This is the kind of guidance that families need, especially if they think they are immune from marketers' schemes."
-Joe Kelly, President, Dads and Daughters
"With compassion, insight, and humor, ÝLamb and Brown¨ unravel and demystify the messages girls confront throughout their development, and they offer adults useful tools to help girls resist their powerful pull. "Packaging Girlhood" is filled with useful information and practical suggestions for adults wishing to help girls critique and rewrite consumer culture's narrow and toxic portrayals of girls. Never judgmental and always illuminating, "PackagingGirlhood" reflects Lamb and Brown's deep respect for girls and their first-hand understanding of the dilemmas of parenting."
-Lynn M. Phillips, Ph.D., Department of Communications, University of Massachusetts at Amherst
"A tour de force of excellent scholarship put in a very readable context and chock full of practical suggestions to parents for change! In "Packaging Girlhood, "Lamb and Brown expose the manner in which our daughters whom we believed had been newly reinforced with "girl power" actually remain enslaved in the gender straitjacket of a narrow and distorted set of messages about what being a "real girl "or young adult female is all about.
A must read for anyone who teaches, works with or wishes to support girls (from tots to teens) in our society and for every parent of a daughter who wants to give her child a legacy of meaningful possibilities instead of a prepackaged world of inhibiting stereotypes."
-William S. Pollack, Ph.D., author of "Real Boys: Rescuing Our Sons from the Myths of Boyhood"

Author Biography

Sharon Lamb is professor of psychology at Saint Michael's College in Vermont and the author of four books, including The Secret Lives of Girls. Her research on girls' development, teenagers and sex, and abuse and victimization is widely cited. As a clinical psychologist, she often works with girls, listening to their struggles and hearing their strengths, in her private practice in Shelburne, Vermont.

Lyn Mikel Brown, professor of education and human development at Colby College in Maine, is the author of three books on girls' development, including Meeting at the Crossroads: Women's Psychology and Girls' Development (with Carol Gilligan). She creates programs for girls at her nonprofit organization, Hardy Girls Healthy Women (www.hardygirlshealthywomen.org).