Friendship bracelets? Fuckin A.

We had big loud pop culture when we were kids too. So did every generation from about the 1950s, maybe even earlier. Pop culture is not incompatible with playground games and friendship bracelets.

If young women are ONLY interested in pop culture then someone is short-changing them. Sure, I enjoyed pop culture as a child but I was also surround by plenty of adults who were more than willing to introduce me to other subjects, like books music other than top 40 stuff, and sports beyond the NFL and the NBA. Since when did it become desirable to set children adrift in the world with no adult guidance whatsoever?

I'm not exactly a pre-pubescent girl any more, but when I left the elementary school playground (less than) ten years ago, jumping rope, hand clapping games and friendship bracelets were alive and well (although I never mastered bracelet making skills myself, I have friends who have made many hundreds of them in their lives). I doubt the zeitgeist has shifted significantly enough that all these things would be no more than relics today.

I think the authors of this book, as well as the author of the Times column, have let themselves do that thing they always swore they'd never do - they've gotten out of touch. Now their only connection with what it's like to be a kid today comes from Hannah Montana and local news stories about the skankification of tweenland. I'm sure the situation is much less dire than the believe it to be. And I think I'm going to go buy myself a copy of that book, as well as the one for boys.

I bought the book for boys recently for my brother in law and three nephews (4, 8 & 10). All four are loving it - my BiL because it gives him great ideas for things to do with the kids to give my sister a day free, and the boys because now dad has these great ideas, every one a new thing to do. (And my sister loves it because it keeps the kids off the computer, gameboy and television!)

I looked at the book for girls and think it is great. I don't care what the "experts" say - I am certain that most girls under 12 will love it.

http://archive.salon.com/mwt/broadsheet/2006/06/20/dangerous_book_for_boys/index.html

Why was the Dangerous Book for Boys so Odious, but the Daring Book for Girls is put plainly, awesome?

This is what I love about Broadsheet Feminism. With no real philosophy to fall back on, you are too easy to predict. Male bashing? You Betcha! Female Cheerleading? You Betcha!

Do you even fool yourself?

I thought I hated the "Princess" culture. This year we see that skank and whore are the popular costumes for little girls. When Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty are positive role models you know the inmates have taken over the asylum.

Under the circumstances anything that encourages girls to learn things, dare, do for themselves and cultivate interests outside the pop culture is to be applauded. If people take your advice it will indeed be irrelevant. But we should fight it every step of the way.

So, the thing to do is to buy the book and place it on a shelf high enough that it is out of reach but not so high that an entirprizing 6 or 7 year old cannot reach it and read it. The books on that shelf should not actually be forbidden so much as books for "when you are older."

Maybe if you were "man" enough (ha!) to actually admit to who you were, we might actually address you like a normal human being.

Or maybe not, since you're just a dipshit anyway.

You're so predictable it's sad.

...and "The Daring Book for Girls" and dare to tango with danger. The girls I knew growing up lived such lives. We rapelled off cliffs and into pits, forayed into wilderness, and worked in ghettoes.

But that was a different time.

Children were more plentiful and especially in my family and so if I wanted to sleep in the snow, my parents said, "Go. Don't die."

My sense is that the book tightly observes gender boundaries. Boys risk danger, but girls dare...barely.

Hell, even Barbie dares...to ski...in pink!

Can't boys have anything for themselves? No - not in post-feminist America, where being male is just about the same as committing a crime.....

Having a book of fun things for girls to do is a threat to boys? A reader asks whether boys can have some things "just for themselves." Well, there are two books, right? And as I look around the entertainment that our culture offers to boys and girls, I see many options intended primarily for boys--most animated movies, for example. Even when the protagonists are non-human, they are typically male. (Examples: Finding Nemo, Toy Story, Brother Bear, Ice Age, Shrek, Ratatouille, Under the Hedge, Flushed Away, Lion King.) Sure, there are exceptions (Lilo and Stitch and any Disney movie with a princess). But there seem to be plenty of movies, toys, and, yes, books, for boys.

What PJ was commenting on, I think, was that when the Dangerous Book for Boys came out it was panned by all the feminists. It was bad, retro, and supposedly reacted to the feminists wimpification of society. Now that there's a similar book for girls, we find out that BOTH books are just fine, for girls.

So let's see: dangerous book for boys given to a boy, BAD. Daring book for Girls and the Dangerous Book for Boys given to a girl, EMPOWERFULLY GREAT IDEA!

What a Daringly Irrelevant article!

Okay, so here's my theory on the Dangerous Book for Boys. It was "FOR BOYS" not "for kids." Had it been labeled as the dangerous book for kids, it would have been okay. Little girls and little boys are not so all fired different in their interests that they need to be segregated by gender and made to feel like freaks for being interested in things the other gender likes.

Had I brought TDBfB home, my daughters would have said, "But it's for BOYS, it SAYS it's for Boys. I'm not a boy." If it had been entitled The Dangerous Book for Kids, they would have dived in. It took activities which are hardly sex exclusive and made them sex exclusive. And didn't we JUST spend the last 50 years fighting exactly that? Isn't that the point?

As far as the daring book, I wish they would combine the volumes and rename them The Dangerous and Daring Book for Kids. I will definitely buy Daring for my girl scouts (and daughters). Might buy Dangerous too.

And, don't think that all young girls learn on the playground is how to be princessy or skanky. Granted, I had to teach my girls "Great green glods of greasy, grimy gopher guts..." and "Miss Susie Had a Steam Boat..." but they learned lots of fart jokes and the tune about the school burning down JUST FINE. The playground in Middle America is not all Brittany and Paris. I would venture to say, that even in the rarefied fashion-forward air of NYC that it's not so.

And so, I will say it again, just because some affluent New Yorker's kid is learning how to accessorize instead of jump rope, doesn't mean no one learns it. If you want your girls to know this stuff, buy the book and do it with them.